The passport to the UK is now burgundy and gold - Richard Gardner / Shutter / SIPA

It was one of the fights of the pro-Brexit: the British passports will regain their blue color next month, instead of the Bordeaux red, after the exit of the country from the European Union, announced the Ministry of the Interior this Saturday. The first dark blue passports will be issued from March and from the mid-2020s, all new passports will be this color.

This new passport will also be "the greenest," said the ministry, the carbon footprint linked to its production being reduced to zero, and also the safest thanks to the use of innovative technologies. "Leaving the European Union has given us a unique opportunity to restore our national identity and chart a new course in the world," said Interior Minister Priti Patel in this release. "Coming back to the iconic blue and gold design, the UK passport will once again be linked to our national identity and I look forward to traveling with it," she said.

"Independence" and "sovereignty"

Ironically, the French group Gemalto will produce these passports. These will however be "personalized with the contact details and the photograph of their holders in the United Kingdom", specifies the ministry. A seemingly innocuous subject, the color of the passport had ignited debates in Parliament and on social networks.

In December 2017, Theresa May, then head of government, had defended this return to the color of yesteryear, judging that the passport was the “mark of our independence and our sovereignty”. The pro-Brexit tabloid The Sun campaigned for the return of the color blue, used for the first time in 1921 on passports and then abandoned in 1988.

Campaigning for a second referendum

Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon mocked the "retrograde and narrow obsession in favor of a blue passport". The new passports will bear the floral emblems of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, a way of exalting the British identity undermined by Brexit.

Nicola Sturgeon, whose independence party SNP won 47 of the 59 constituencies in Scotland in the December legislative elections, is campaigning for a second referendum on the independence of this nation. In Ireland, the February 8 elections saw the historic breakthrough of Sinn Fein, who wants to reunite the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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  • Brexit
  • UK
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  • Ireland
  • England
  • National identity