A flotilla of ‘Little Ships’ crossing the Channel to commemorate the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 was forced to divert so Border Force could provide safe passage for illegal immigrants heading for Kent.

Eighty-five years after 1,000 assorted fishing boats and pleasure craft set off from England to rescue troops trapped on the beaches of northern France, the British government agency charged with protecting our borders was ferrying yet another boatload of military-age migrants in the opposite direction.

The fleet of 66 Little Ships left Ramsgate at 6am yesterday to mark the ‘bravery and sacrifice’ of those who took part in Operation Dynamo, which brought 300,000 soldiers home safely.

But shortly after they put to sea the organisers received a radio message over a marine frequency telling them to change course in order to give the migrant boat a wide berth.

UK Border Force and the French navy demanded that they set up a one-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the boat.

I was planning on half-joking that I didn’t know whether to file this story under You Couldn’t Make It Up or Makes You Proud To Be British.

But, frankly, I’m torn between laughing and weeping bitter tears of impotent rage at the symbolism of a tribute to those who helped defend the independence of our nation – and subsequently enable the liberation of occupied Europe – being relegated in favour of the latest wave of illegal migrants invading our shores. 

Shortly after the ships put to sea the organisers received a radio message over a marine frequency telling them to change course in order to give the migrant boat a wide berth

Yes, I know the far-Left, ferociously pro-migrant lobby and their useful idiots in government, the courts and the media object to the expression ‘invasion’.

But how else should we accurately describe the fact that more than 150,000 mostly young men, and about whom we know nothing, have crossed the Channel since 2018?

A record 800-plus arrived in a single day this week and the headline number is predicted to hit 50,000 this year. By the time Labour is kicked out of office in 2029, the total is likely to exceed the 300,000 British troops rescued from northern France in 1940.

And, yes, they are mainly young men, even though the cynical people smugglers occasionally put the odd woman and child in the dinghies to tug at the heartstrings of the ‘Refugees Welcome Here’ hand-wringers.

Most of them are ‘rescued’ by Border Force after being escorted halfway across by the French, to whom we have bunged more than £500 million to ‘stop the boats’ to little effect.

Once they land, they’re here for good, not so much ‘no questions asked’ as ‘any answer accepted’. They are immediately granted access to free accommodation, legal advice, medical treatment and the full panoply of benefits Britain has to offer these ‘irregular entrants’, as we must apparently now call them. Our immigration judges won’t kick them out, even if they commit the most heinous crimes.

(Yesterday we learned that a Pakistani paedophile, twice convicted of abusing underage girls, has avoided deportation on the grounds that he might face persecution back home, poor lamb. His case is being heard again, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.)

For what it’s worth, I don’t blame the hard-pressed men and women of Border Force for this farce. They are only obeying orders from their political masters. I’m sure many, if not the majority, of them are deeply unhappy at being required to provide a free cross-Channel ferry service for illegals. That’s not what they signed up to do.

What’s most scandalous about this latest Little Ships incident is that the Dunkirk spirit is deeply embedded in our national psyche.

Christopher Nolan’s 2017 movie Dunkirk was recently voted our favourite Second World War film – although I prefer Leslie Norman’s more understated 1958 original, starring John Mills and Dickie Attenborough, which would have had more resonance with the generation which lived through and served in the war.

There’s a reason for this. Both films celebrated a saner, braver, Britain, determined to fight for our national independence – a spirit utterly lost on our current Unhappy Breed of politicians.

Only recently, we were marking the anniversary of VE Day and Surkeir was wrapping himself in the flag and talking about bringing back the Home Guard, while preparing to sell us out again to Europe.

(Never mind the Chagos islands, our Prime Minister is hellbent on handing over control of our own islands to a foreign power.)

Those who survived Dunkirk, and the brave civilians who rescued them, wouldn’t believe what Britain has become, in thrall to the pernicious cult of ‘yuman rites’, run by a political class which appears to despise the freedoms our country once stood for and which we were prepared to defend with our lives.

Most of us who grew up with parents and grandparents who had first-hand experience of that war can’t believe it, either.

Who could have imagined, even a few short years ago, that a patriotic flotilla of small ships commemorating one of our finest hours would be ordered to make way for a boatload of illegal immigrants?

You couldn’t make it up? If I had, some of you would have complained that I’d gone too far this time, even by my standards. As Captain Mainwaring might have observed: I think we’re entering the realms of fantasy here.

But Makes You Proud To Be British? Not so much any more, sadly.