Barbados has fired Queen Elizabeth as its head of state and will become a republic by next year.

Governor-General Dame Sandra Mason says: ’The time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind. Barbadians want a Barbadian Head of State.

It’s the first country to break free from the monarch in nearly three decades.

The Queen remains the head of state of 15 other countries that were formerly under British rule, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica and several other island nations in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean.