Labour lawmaker Angela Eagle announced on Tuesday that she was dropping out of the race against Jeremy Corbyn for leadership of Britain’s main opposition party.
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Mrs May said: “Labour may be about to have several months of fighting and tearing itself apart”.
Labour confirmed that Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith will be the only two candidates for the postal vote which ends on September 24. I know they will have got involved for the same reasons I did, because they want to tackle inequality and be part of building a fairer Britain and world.
Any fears the occasion might overawe her were banished when she delivered a withering put-down to Jeremy Corbyn. Those 172 Labour MPs would be constantly asked whether they really believed the public should make Mr Corbyn prime minister – and, if they were being honest, they would be obliged to say no.
The Labour leader’s lawyers argued that his interest was “pressing and obvious”, saying that his personal perspective distinguished him from the members represented by Mr McNicol.
But supporters of Mr Smith say the campaign group Save Labour have encouraged thousands to sign up and vote for the former shadow Cabinet Minister.
Also weighing in will be the party’s 230 MPs, while 71,546 union affiliated supporters also voted in the 2015 leadership election that propelled Corbyn to power.
The legal challenge, brought by former parliamentary candidate Michael Foster, contests the decision of Labour’s national executive committee to allow Corbyn on the ballot paper without having to secure nominations from Labour MPs.
The majority of Labour MPs are opposed to Mr Corbyn’s leadership and have put forward Pontypridd MP Owen Smith as a challenger in a leadership election to be held this summer.
“I think it is very unfortunate and another example of why really we need a new leadership rather than Jeremy Corbyn”.
Labour now has more than 500,000 full members and the 183,541 people who became registered supporters over just two days this week is nearly more than both the Tory and Lib Dem membership combined.
Unveiling his first policy proposal, he said the next Labour government would require every employer with more than 20 staff to publish “equality pay audits” in a bid to eliminate the gender pay gap and other pay discrimination by shaming bosses.
“The injustices that scar society today are not those of 1945: want, squalor, idleness, disease and ignorance”.
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He posted on a live Facebook feed: “We will set out some of the measures the next Labour government will take to overcome them”.
