Hello and bonjour!
It’s a dismal grey November day in Paris
and today we interrupt your regular scheduled programming on this channel
to bring you live coverage of the French flag.
Now do you notice anything different about it?
Well don’t worry because no-one else did either,
until Sunday,
when the radio station Europe 1
- or as the French insist on calling it, Europe Un -
broke the news that President Macron has changed the colours of the French flag
from blue white and red, to....
a very very slightly different blue white and red.
The new flags have been flying on all the Presidential buildings
and displayed behind the president at press conferences since last July
and somehow, no-one really noticed until this week.
Cue a hundred viral articles,
a hurried edit to the Wikipedia page,
and every public building in France going "wait, do we need to put new flags outside or what?"
So why does such a small change matter?
Does it actually matter?
And can the president really just change the colour of the French flag?
Well firstly, yes it does matter!
(To some people.)
The famous tricolore dates back to the French revolution,
which was kind of a big deal around here.
The colours were chosen to combine the traditional navy blue and red of Paris
with the traditional white flag of France
- and no, that isn’t a cheap gag, they really did have a white flag.
It was the colour of the French royal family,
and they even went back to it when the Monarchy was briefly restored later on.
But apart from that, it’s been blue white and red ever since the Revolution.
Until 1976,
when President Giscard d’Estaing switched to a new design
with a very slightly lighter shade of blue
and a very very slightly lighter shade of red.
The blue was chosen to match the cobalt blue of the EU flag,
and this was partly a symbol of France’s commitment to the project,
but mostly a symbol of the President’s commitment to avoiding a colour clash.
Now normally you’d be well within your rights to say
“oh come on Tim, don’t be ridiculous,
a President wouldn’t colour match the national flag to the EU one
just to make them look nicer together”.
But this is France,
and you don’t get to be as stylish as the French are
without taking this kind of thing very seriously.
So they actually did it.
The new tricolore was adopted across the nation
by government buildings, town halls, schools, and the military,
apart from Navy, who stuck with the original flag,
and pointed out that if you’re going to talk about matching colours,
then there’s a reason why it’s called navy blue.
And what Mr Macron has done
is to go back to the flag that the Navy has been using all along.
In other words, it’s not really a new flag,
it’s a readoption of the traditional revolutionary one.
But does this mean if you’re President of France
you can literally change the colour of the flag whenever you want to?
Well yes.
But also no.
The red white and blue tricolore is written into the constitution.
So for example, you couldn’t change it to pink orange and green.
But there’s nothing stopping you changing the shade.
It’s just one of those things you can do when you’re a president.
Giscard is the same guy who slowed down the national anthem just because he could,
until Miterrand came in and sped it back up again.
But one of the other things about being President of France,
or indeed any country,
is that you can’t really do anything without *some people* seeing it as political;
Giscard d’Estaing was obviously very pro-EU
and Macron choosing to switch back to the revolutionary flag
could be seen as quite a political statement,
especially with an election coming up next year.
Although that’s a bit weird because Macron is usually pretty pro-EU himself.
For what it’s worth,
the government have stated that the change has nothing to do with the EU,
and although the president is now using the darker shade of blue,
there’s been no official instructions telling anyone else to do the same.
So there you go.
The French flag has officially changed colour.
But also it hasn’t, if you don’t want it to.
I hope that clears everything up.
And since this is YouTube why not let me know what you think in the comments!
Do we like the old flag or the new one?
If you’re not French, has anyone changed your flag recently?
Have you checked?
What sort of things do your politicians get up to when they think no-one’s looking?
And as always thank you all for watching,
and I will see you soon.