LONDON, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Members of Britain's main opposition Labour Party have until noon on Wednesday to vote in a leadership battle that could determine the fate of the party.
Current leader Jeremy Corbyn remains the bookmaker's favorite to beat challenger, the Welsh MP Owen Smith.
In a last minute scramble to win the remaining votes among the more than 600,000 members entitled to take part in the ballot, both sides Sunday continued in the war of words.
Corbyn, according to mainstream media reports, says he will introduce reforms if he holds onto the leadership. This would mean grassroots members being involved in deciding party policy, as well as a shake-up in the way Labour's front bench is chosen.
According to the reports, Corbyn proposes one third of the front bench team elected by MPs, a third by himself and a third by the membership.
The leadership election was triggered after 172 of Labour MPs backed a vote of no-confidence in Corbyn as leader, with just 40 backing him. At the same time virtually all of his shadow cabinet members resigned.
Despite being estranged from his own MPs, Corbyn has gathered massive grass roots support.
Also being trailed Sunday is a television interview due to be aired Monday in which former Labour leader Neil Kinnock says that unless things in the party dramatically change, he doubts if he will see a Labour government in his lifetime.
Kinnock, who now sits in the House of Lords, is best known as the party leader who in the 1980s declared war on the so-called faction, Militant Tendency, an ultra left wing group that dominated the political landscape at that time.
Ironically the result of the leadership contest will be announced Saturday in Liverpool, the city famed as the flagship of Militant Tendency in the mid-1980s.
Kinnock has given a stark warning about the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn.
Kinnock in his interview adds that stretching back to the 1930s, the current situation is the greatest crisis that Labour has faced.
Reports also hit the Sunday papers claiming 25 percent of Labour MPs supported forming a new political party if Corbyn wins the election.
Many MPs fear they will face selection contests in their own constituencies in the run-up to the next general election, due in 2020.
Their concern is that with many of the hundreds of thousands of new party members backing Corbyn, the so-called Corbynistas, MPs who opposed their hero will be fired.
Momentum, a left-wing political organisation, was formed just weeks after Corbyn won the Labour leadership in a surprise, but landslide victory last September.
The group says it exists to strengthen the Labour Party by increasing participation and engagement at local, regional and national levels.
The growing activity of Momentum with local branches of the party has fuelled fears of long-serving MPs being rejected.
A number of anti-Corbyn Labour MPs also say they and their office staff have faced intimidation and threats during what has been described as the party's "civil war".
MP Angela Eagle, who deputised for Corbyn in the House of Commons before she resigned, was the first to challenge him for the leadership. She withdrew to pave the way for a single opponent, Owen Smith.
Eagle, MP for the constituency of Wallasey near Liverpool, says in recent months she has received numerous death threats, and her office was attacked by vandals.
Meanwhile the latest poll from YouGov this week shows the Conservatives are still way ahead Labour, but the gap has narrowed from 11 points to just seven. YouGov said in a general election taking place today 38 percent would vote Conservative, a drop of two percent, while 31 percent would back Labour, a rise of two percent.
