I am disgusted, yet not surprised.
Thanks to the failings of the previous Tory governments, the failings of the current Labour government and the loud voices of the GC mob, the UK is becoming an unsafer place for the LGBTQIA+ community in the UK. The community already knew this (apart from those who align themselves with the GC mob), but the ILGA Rainbow Map shows it clearly.
The ILGA look at legal and policy practices for LGBTI people in Europe, and score a percentage on how well each country does on legal and policy protections for the community.
From a high of 86% in 2015, ten years later, the UK languishes at just 45.65%.
This regression in just one decade is disgraceful.
Here is the evolution of UK scores from the start (2013):
2013 – 76.50%
2014 – 80.25%
2015 – 86.00%
2016 – 79.19%
2017 – 75.73%
2018 – 73.48%
2019 – 67.62%
2020 – 66.16%
2021 – 63.74%
2022 – 53.40%
2023 – 53.40%
2024 – 51.88%
2025 – 45.65%
The UK now stands below the European Union average (51.13%) but slightly higher than the Europe average (41.85%). However, we have fallen from 14th place to 22nd. In order from 1st to 21st, we lag behind the following countries:
Malta, Belgium, Iceland, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Greece, Germany, Norway, Luxembourg, Portugal, Sweden, Netherlands, Ireland, France, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Montenegro, Croatia and Estonia.
We are above the following countries:
Andorra, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Moldova, Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Cyprus, Czechia, North Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, San Marino, Monaco, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Russia.
The advocacy director of ILGA-Europe, Katrin Hugendubel, says:
“Moves in the UK, Hungary, Georgia and beyond signal not just isolated regressions, but a coordinated global backlash aimed at erasing LGBTI rights, cynically framed as the defence of tradition or public stability, but in reality designed to entrench discrimination and suppress dissent.”
For each category in the UK, these are the percentages with 2024 percentages in brackets:
Equality and non-discrimination – 49.13% (47.43%)
Family – 85.67% (85.71%)
Hate crime and hate speech – 40.55% (41.60%)
Legal gender recognition – 6.57% (43.21%)
Intersex bodily integrity – 0.00% (0.00%)
Civil society space – 100% (100%)
Asylum – 16.67% (16.67%)
If you’d like to read the UK-specific report, go here: https://www.ilga-europe.org/files/uploads/2025/02/Annual-Review-2025-United-Kingdom.pdf
And here is the online page for the UK: https://rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org/countries/united-kingdom/
I never wanted to believe that the UK would regress so far, particularly with the demonisation of a marginalised group within our own marginalised community.
Well done to the various UK governments and the GC mob for making all of this possible. Eventually, no members of the LGBTQIA+ community will have any rights whatsoever. Well fucking done.