Ex-Labour MP Rosie Duffield slams ‘backtracking’ Keir Starmer in trans row | Politics | News | EUROtoday

Keir Starmer was accused of “backtracking” and “pretending” after Labour welcomed a Supreme Court ruling that the phrases “woman” and “sex” within the Equality Act 2010 seek advice from a organic lady and organic intercourse. Ex-Labour MP Rosie Duffield stated “some women have paid a heavy price” due to the Labour chief’s refusal to help girls’s rights.

The UK’s highest courtroom has unanimously dominated that the phrases lady and intercourse within the Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”. It follows a protracted marketing campaign by girls together with Ms Duffield, who resigned the celebration whip final yr partly on account of what she noticed as lack of help from the management. She had stated that “only women have a cervix” however requested if he agreed, Sir Keir stated in 2021: “Well, it is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.”

However a Labour supply claimed final evening that Sir Keir has “hauled the Labour party back to the common sense position” on the problem. Responding to the ruling, the supply stated: “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 advised 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 fortunate. I’ve obtained an incredible job and the British public put me the place I’m, not the Labour Party, however they’ve carried out the whole lot of their energy to make life as tough for me as potential over the previous few years. And plenty of girls like me who’ve given up and left politics. So it’s kind of ironic that they need to 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 unbiased, additionally stated there have been “gender-critical so-called feminists” inside the celebration who “haven’t supported me” and may “feel braver now about speaking up.”

She advised 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 or not there was something Labour might do to convey her again into the fold, she stated: “A proper and sort of genuine sorry would nice, but that isn’t going to happen under Keir Starmer’s leadership.”

Asked whether or not she thought there is likely to be a broader change in the best way the celebration approaches problems with gender following the ruling, Ms Duffield stated: “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.”