Sacre Bleu

Yesterday was Trooping the Colour – that annual pomp-drenched extravaganza where we dust off the plumes, shine the buckles, and pretend the monarchy is still a unifying symbol rather than a gold-plated tourist attraction with constitutional side-effects. A proud tradition, we’re told – pageantry and patriotism hand in hand, goose-stepping toward the past. The horses trotted, the guardsman fainted on cue, and His Majesty stood on the balcony like a man quietly wondering whether the whole thing might be a bit much before lunch.

And then came the Red Arrows.

The nation’s aerial pride. Nine crimson darts shrieking across the sky in perfect formation, trailing plumes of red, white and... blue. Which sounds fine – until you notice the arrangement. Not the Union Flag. Not even a drunken echo of it. No, it was three polite, evenly spaced vertical stripes. Red, white and blue. Or more accurately: bleu, blanc, rouge.

The French flag.

Yes – on the day meant to celebrate Britishness in all its feathered, brass-buttoned absurdity, our crowning aerial flourish looked suspiciously like a homage to la République. You half expected Charles to produce a baguette from under his robes and start humming the Marseillaise while Camilla tried not to look too much like Marianne.

And I’m sure some apologist will chirp up, “But the Union Flag also uses red, white and blue!” Yes – but not in that order. Not in three parallel stripes like a bottle of fancy shampoo. And certainly not in the precise sequence flown over every mairie from Marseille to Dunkirk.

You could almost hear the ghost of Napoleon chuckling in his crypt.

Whether it was a subtle message from the RAF or just an accident of dye cartridge logistics, the symbolism wasn’t hard to miss. On the most patriotic of British days, we managed to daub the sky with the colours of the country we spent centuries fighting, mocking, and more recently – trying to negotiate trade deals with while pretending we’d never really liked them anyway.

It’s all a bit on the nose.

Perhaps it’s a cry for help. Perhaps the Red Arrows are trying to say what the politicians won’t – that we’ve cocked it up, that Brexit was a tin-pot fantasy, and that now we’re floating around like a post-Imperial ghost ship waving at container ports we no longer dock in. Maybe the French flag in the sky is less a symbol of surrender and more of longing. “Sorry about everything – can we come back?”

Or maybe it's just habit. We buy their wine, nick their cheese, and the last remaining Conservative voters all seem to have second homes in Provence. Even the coronation quiche was halfway to a pissaladière.

So next year, let’s lean into it. Replace the fanfare with La Vie en Rose, issue berets to the Household Division, and let Charles swap the orb and sceptre for a string of garlic and a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Because if this is British sovereignty, it seems to come with a surprisingly French aftertaste – and no amount of flag-waving can cover that up.