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Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks at an anti-racism rally in London, Britain July 2, 2016.NEIL HALL/Reuters

Britain's political crisis has already seen the country vote to leave the European Union, and forced the resignation of a prime minister.

Now the country's opposition Labour Party – which should have been in good position to capitalize on the chaos inside the ruling Conservatives – has also decided to tear itself apart as the fallout from last month's stunning referendum vote in favour of a Brexit continues to spread.

After the collapse of negotiations aimed at convincing Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn to step aside in the name of party unity, veteran MP Angela Eagle announced on Sunday that she would launch a formal challenge and seek to replace Mr. Corbyn as leader. But the outcome of the contest may well be decided as much in court as by the party's 500,000 members.

Ms. Eagle said she had the support of at least 51 Labour MPs, the minimum required to trigger a leadership review, and she questioned whether Mr. Corbyn would be able to raise the same number of endorsements. Mr. Corbyn is widely blamed within Labour's parliamentary faction for not campaigning hard enough to keep Britain inside the EU, and he recently lost a caucus confidence vote after the referendum by a margin of 172 to 40.

But Mr. Corbyn – a staunch left-winger who remains popular with the party's wider membership – has made it clear he has no intention of stepping aside. He claimed on Sunday that he, as the incumbent, did not need a minimum level of support from his fellow MPs to win a place on the ballot in any leadership contest.

The party's National Executive Committee is expected to make a ruling on the matter, but Mr. Corbyn said on Sunday that he would take the matter to court if the NEC ruled against him.

"I would be irresponsible if I walked away from a mandate that I was given and a responsibility that I was given," Mr. Corbyn said on Sunday. "I ask colleagues to respect that as well."

Opinion polls of Labour's membership suggest the 67-year-old Mr. Corbyn, a long-time party rebel who shocked the Labour establishment by winning the leadership last fall, would handily defeat Ms. Eagle in a head-to-head contest. More than 100,000 new members have joined Labour since the June 23 referendum, and many are believed to be supporters of Mr. Corbyn who signed up specifically to help fend off the challenge to his leadership.

The standoff has become so bitter that some in Labour could split the party. The MPs challenging Mr. Corbyn are mainly from the centre-left of the political spectrum and say the party is unelectable as long Mr. Corbyn is leader.

"We need a strengthened Labour Party and an opposition that can unite, so we can heal the country and unfortunately I just don't think Jeremy can do that job," Ms. Eagle told the BBC. The 55-year-old had worked with Mr. Corbyn as shadow business secretary until resigning her post following the EU referendum.

The Labour membership however, is now dominated by union members and left-wing activists who believe the party deserted its principles and drifted too far to the centre during the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown era that saw Labour win three consecutive general elections.

With the Conservative Party also in turmoil following the Brexit vote, British media have begun to speculate that Conservative and Labour MPs who are pro-European could create a new centrist party as the traditional parties move further to the right and left.

The race to replace David Cameron as Conservative Leader – and become the next prime minister – also took on an angrier tone on the weekend as Andrea Leadsom, one of the two candidates still in the race, drew widespread criticism for suggesting she was better suited to the prime minister's job than her competitor Theresa May because she, unlike Ms. May, had children.

"She possibly has nieces, nephews … but I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next," Ms. Leadsom told The Times of London in an interview. Referring to the looming negotiations with the EU regarding the terms of Britain's withdrawal from the 28-country union, she added: "I have a real stake in the next year, the next two."

The 59-year-old Ms. May, a long-time Home Secretary, recently revealed that she and her husband had unsuccessfully tried to have kids.

Ms. May and Ms. Leadsom were the two candidates selected in a vote among the Conservative Party caucus last week, and the party's wider membership will now choose between the two women in a September ballot.

Ms. May enters the contest as the favourite, after capturing 199 votes from Conservative MPs, to 84 for Ms. Leadsom. Pundits speculated that Ms. Leadsom's controversial comments about motherhood were a clumsy family-values pitch, intended to appeal to the party's socially conservative membership.

The 53-year-old mother of three was a relative political unknown until she became one of the most prominent pro-Brexit campaigners ahead of the referendum. Ms. Leadsom apparently hopes to catch the same anti-establishment wave that carried Mr. Corbyn to his party's leadership last year.

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