- That sounds right. So we can assume the gauge group of the Standard Model is the larger 2-component group having S(U(2) × U(3)) as its identity component if we want, for mathematical elegance, and we're unlikely to find experimental evidence proving or disproving this. That's fine, as far as I'm concerned.
In a sense this is like saying we could gauge the Galois group of ℂ over ℝ.
