Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Trooping the colour which starts this morning and ends with a fly-past salute of jets screaming across Ken’s London, is a reminder that the royal family is a military clan like few others. “There were three of us in this marriage", Diana said, complaining that it was "a bit crowded". Well there has always been another member of the royal family, the army. This is not a boastful military parade, showing off the latest rocket, rejoicing in a victory (the Falklands celebrations is at arms length) or commemorating losses as on 11 November. It’s a birthday parade for the sovereign, with musical marches. I bought the programme for this year’s on my way to the Compass conference when St James was closed for a rehearsal. As it helpfully explains, “With a sharp eye and more personal experience of this parade than any other person present, Her Majesty will immediately notice any detail that is not 100% correct, which is why there are two full dress rehearsals for this event”. The Queen is not famed as a reader, which may be a good thing in this case, or her sharp eyes might have noticed a terrible howler. On page 2, S.J.L. Roberts, Major General Commanding the Household Division, writes that trooping the colour became an annual event “After George IV became King in 1762”. That was when he was born. He only became King (and the ceremony an annual one, it seems, allowing for bad weather, wars and other emergencies) in 1820.
An ominous fact, presumably correct, is another note in the programme about the regiments on parade, “2007 marks a departure from every other parade that has taken place since the end of the Second World War in that every Guards Regiment or Battalion is currently serving abroad, preparing to serve abroad or has just returned from overseas service.”
The battle honours marked on the regimental colour flag being trooped today include the Gulf 1991 and go back to Tangiers in 1680. This is what really matters: not the insignia to come but a ceremony that is weaving history into the present, through its brightly coloured musical spectacle of intricate salutes and manoeuvres. This is Britishness. (Even if it, typically, gets its own dating wrong.) My guess is that it was the Queen rather than the Prime Minister who instigated the invitation to Alex Salmond to join her secret council (see below). She is determined that her family and their army will survive, whether or not the UK does in its present form, and is playing a long game. The annual attraction of colour is a part it.
