London Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith found this to admire about Israel, as he recalled at a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch this week.

Staying once at a boutique hotel in Tel Aviv, he said: "When I arrived, I felt I was the only man in the room - it certainly felt like women's night.

"Then it dawned on me after a few moments, that it wasn't women's night.

"It was transvestite night. And my wife was the only woman."

And where else in the Middle East would people be free to hold such an event, he asked.