Is there a country Britain should try to emulate? If like me, you think there’s nowhere better to live, you may bristle at the question. Bear with me because the self-appointed moral guardians of our age, the LGBTQ+ lobby, have come up with a surprising if not downright idiotic suggestion: Malta. Yes, the tiny Mediterranean basket case where abortion is illegal and, according to Transparency International, “corruption continues to flourish unchecked”, is their choice as an exemplar.

That’s the conclusion of the annual rankings of 49 European countries by the international LGBTQ+ lobbyists ILGA which compares nations on the basis of their equality laws and policies. Malta was top of the tree for the seventh time in a row. 

The story reveals an ethical vacuum in the LGBTQ+ lobby

It was less good news for the UK. Our ranking slipped for the third year, and we’re now down to fourteenth. Cue a well-coordinated LGBTQ+ meltdown that saw the UK compared to Russia, and Hungary, places where it’s not just difficult to be openly gay but dangerous. “The UK should hang its head in shame” bleated Jayne Ozanne, a former advisor to the government who walked off in a cream puff when Liz Truss refused to follow her advice. Stonewall’s Nancy Kelley, meanwhile, keened that “years of progress on LGBTQ+ policy … has been rapidly eroded”. 

So what gives? How can such a tolerant place as the UK possibly be a traumatic homophobic and transphobic hell hole?

The simple explanation is that the LGBTQ+ lobby is on manoeuvres. Ever since Boris Johnson declined to introduce a Trans Conversion Therapy Ban, the Tories have been the target of the sort of vicious trolling that’s usually reserved for lone woman academics or girls who don’t want to share their changing rooms and sports podiums with males. 

ILGA is a deeply flawed and irreparably compromised body. Forget that it was denied official NGO status by the UN for over a decade because it was affiliated with two unrepentant paedophile groups. It has since cut ties and now takes an anti-paedophile stance, which is terribly good of it. 

Now like hundreds of organisations that used to promote gay rights, ILGA focuses almost exclusively on the rights of trans people and the other non-binary denizens of the mysterious “gender spectrum”. One of ILGA’s key stated aims is to remove gender from every legal document including birth certificates. In Europe it receives a third of its funding from the EU, which should tell you everything you need to know about its empathy for the UK.

If we should treat ILGA with contempt (and we should), what about the country it has placed Number One in its rankings, Malta? There lies a story, one that reveals the ethical vacuum that has developed in large sections of the LGBTQ+ lobby.

When the Maltese Labour Party won an election in 2013, its young Blair-like leader Joseph Muscat set out to win influence in Brussels for his tiny country with a population less than Glasgow and a reputation for deep conservatism. 

Galizia accused the Maltese government of using LGBTQ+ policies as a smokescreen

His recipe was for Malta to present itself as an LGBTQ+ paragon by rapidly embracing the latest policy prescriptions coming out of the EU’s favourite LGBTQ+ lobby group ILGA. Malta would implement them no questions asked, from Self-ID of gender and a non-binary option on passports to a ban on trans conversion therapy. One journalist smelled a rat.

Daphne Caruana Galizia accused the Maltese government of using its high-profile LGBTQ+ policies as a smokescreen to distract from its alleged links with gangsters and thugs, as well as its alleged involvement in corruption and money laundering. Among the biggest Cabinet champions of LGBTQ+ virtue-signalling like Helena Dalli, she alleged rampant nepotism and rule-breaking. Dalli would go on to be appointed as the EU’s Equalities Commissioner on E250K a year.

Dalli’s son, whom she’d given a publicly funded job, co-presented a TV show with one of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisors that regularly defamed Daphne and encouraged the public to stalk her. One Labour politician was convicted of harassing her physically. After Daphne was assassinated in a car bomb in 2017, major figures within the Cabinet were accused of sanctioning her murder. One was accused by the men who’d eventually be convicted of her death, though these claims were never proved. Three others were forced to resign. Another leading pro-LGBTQ+ politician Deborah Schembri had to apologise after she appeared to suggest the murder was Daphne’s own fault. Muscat had to resign after both he and his government were accused of obstructing the investigation. 

This bunch were the people who implemented the pro-trans policies ILGA now praises so highly. When the Inquiry into Daphne’s murder issued its report last year, it concluded that the entire government had to bear responsibility for creating a culture of impunity. “The tentacles of impunity then spread to other regulatory bodies and the police, leading to a collapse in the rule of law”.

Given that Stonewall has consistently shown contempt for the law in this country, it’s perhaps no surprise its allied lobby feels so much at home in a country where the rule of law collapsed. Malta is far from an example we should follow. It’s merely a vivid reminder that the LGBTQ+ lobby needs to rediscover its moral compass.