Two British men were arrested by French police in Calais on Sunday night. In a statement the Pas-de-Calais prefecture said the pair were detained ‘during an identity check while they were posting a video on social media’.

Prosecutor Cecile Gressier said the men, aged 50 and 35, were in custody on suspicion of ‘participation in a group with the intent to prepare acts of violence’.

There is something sinister about far-right activists travelling to France to take matters into their own hands

Apparently the pair had tried to rally a large crowd of Britons to Calais but few responded to their call to arms. In one video posted before their arrest, a man declares: ‘I’ll guard the beaches tonight, if no one else wants to.’

The activists had dubbed their mission, Operation Overlord, the codename for the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. The men who came ashore that day were liberators; the men who came to Calais last weekend were laughable. A reporter from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo did respond to the anti-migrant Overlord appeal, out of........

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