At the Conservative Friends of Israel annual business lunch last week, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said he had vivid memories of Soviet dissident and retired Israeli politician Natan Sharansky walking across the Glienicke Bridge in West Berlin on his release from prison in 1986.

Mr Osborne said: “When I met him years later, I asked him what he was thinking as he crossed the bridge, and he said: ‘I had lost so much weight, and because my belt had been taken, I was terrified my trousers would fall down’.”