One of the longest-running assessments of countries’ performance on LGBTQ+ rights and healthcare is the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map and Index. British politicians used to speak proudly of our place in it, because in 2015 we led Europe: the UK was ranked as the best place in Europe for LGBTQ+ people to live, work and love.

And then in 2017, the war on trans people started.

Under the Conservatives, we dropped from first place to 9th place by 2020.

We dropped again to 10th place in 2021, and to 14th place in 2022.

Then Labour came to power, promising to protect LGBTQ+ people’s rights. But instead of reversing the decline Labour accelerated it.

We’re now ranked 22nd.

That means we’ve dropped from being the best place in Europe for LGBTQ+ people to one of the worst, with the UK ranked alongside Hungary and Georgia.

The political parties that enabled this are currently complaining that they’ve been banned from many of this year’s Pride events. Which says a lot about how they really see the LGBTQ+ community: as a resource they can mine for PR, not a community of people they should protect. Because the bans aren’t on individual members; they’re a ban on the parties using Pride to pinkwash their reputations, wrapping themselves in the colours of communities they’re actively harming.