What item of beachwear do you think would be incompatible with British values? As a serious proposition the question seems absurd, so you’d probably reply that those half-thongs worn by male members of an Essex-based reality TV show a couple of years back came pretty close.

In France yesterday the prime minister, Manuel Valls, who is for 364 days of the year a sensible man, declared that the burkini was un-French. This costume covers the body, legs and hair of a female swimmer — and Mr Valls deemed it an encroachment of religion into the secular world of the public beach.

“The burkini is not a new range of swimwear, a fashion,” Mr Valls said. “It is the expression of a political project, a counter-society,