Keir Starmer was accused of “backtracking” and “pretending” after Labour welcomed a Supreme Court ruling that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex. Ex-Labour MP Rosie Duffield said “some women have paid a heavy price” because of the Labour leader’s refusal to support women’s rights.

The UK’s highest court has unanimously ruled that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”. It follows a long campaign by women including Ms Duffield, who resigned the party whip last year partly due to what she saw as lack of support from the leadership. She had said that “only women have a cervix” but asked if he agreed, Sir Keir said in 2021: “Well, it is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.”

However a Labour source claimed last night that Sir Keir has “hauled the Labour party back to the common sense position” on the issue. Responding to the ruling, the source said: “He gradually moved the party from one that took the activist position to a serious, sensible one that protected women’s spaces while allowing for respectful debate.”

Ms Duffield told Times Radio: “It’s a load of gaslighting, to put it politely. I mean, the Labour Party have actively blocked women from promotion, women from standing as councillors and politicians in the last, you know, five, 10 years. If we’ve shown the remotest sort of sliver of questioning trans rights to enter our spaces and self-certificated or self-ID’d men to kind of infiltrate hospital wards and all the things that they’ve listed. And some women have paid a heavy price.

“I’m very lucky. I’ve got a great job and the British public put me where I am, not the Labour Party, but they’ve done everything in their power to make life as difficult for me as possible over the last few years. And lots of women like me who’ve given up and left politics. So it’s a bit ironic that they should say that now.”

And she accused Labour of “trying to backtrack” and “pretend that they were always on board, which obviously is not the case”.

The MP for Canterbury, who now sits in Parliament as an independent, also said there were “gender-critical so-called feminists” within the party who “haven’t supported me” and might “feel braver now about speaking up.”

She told Sky News: “We’ve already heard the Labour Party sort of trying to backtrack and pretend that they were always on board, which is obviously not the case. I hope all politicians understand that the law has to be stuck to here.”

Asked whether there was anything Labour could do to bring her back into the fold, she said: “A proper and sort of genuine sorry would nice, but that isn’t going to happen under Keir Starmer’s leadership.”

Asked whether she thought there might be a broader change in the way the party approaches issues of gender following the ruling, Ms Duffield said: “Possibly, I mean I’d like to think so.

“Certainly women like me and all of the gender-critical so-called feminists who have been very silent, very quiet in Labour and haven’t supported me, perhaps they’ll feel braver now about speaking up.

“I’m starting an all-party parliamentary group on women’s rights with the Women’s Rights Network, and perhaps people should pressure their Labour MP to join that now.”