PROMINENT Labour figures traded blows in a series of ill-tempered clashes as the party’s rancorous leadership contest enters its final 48 hours later today.

Jeremy Corbyn is widely tipped to be reelected as Labour leader on Saturday at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, with voting for members and registered supporters due to close at noon on Wednesday.

However, some of the party’s most senior figures mounted a series of attacks on Corbyn and made last-ditch appeals to Labour’s electorate to dump the Islington North MP as leader after just over a year in post.

Leadership rival Owen Smith said a plan by Corbyn to include Labour members in elections for the shadow cabinet was an attempt to “deepen divisions” to further cement his position at the top of the party.

Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock claimed the party faced a “lifetime” out of power if Corbyn defeats Smith.

Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme, Kinnock said: “Unless things change radically, and rapidly, it’s very doubtful I’ll see another Labour government in my lifetime.”

However, Corbyn said that Kinnock, who led Labour to two General Election defeats, should be “more optimistic”, as he insisted the party could appeal to the centre-ground.

Speaking on ITV’s Peston on Sunday, Corbyn said that Labour under his leadership is reaching out to voters across the UK as he also spoke about including party members in shadow cabinet elections.

Asked how he could appeal to centre-ground voters, he said: “Do we want an education service that works for all or works for the few?

“Do we want a health service that works for everybody or a health service of last resort for those that can’t afford to go private?

“Do we want an investment strategy that builds railways and broadband communication over the whole of the country?

“Do we want a government that actually works for the whole country and reaches out to those places that have been left behind?

“It’s reaching out to the whole country. That’s what we’re offering.”

Corbyn’s critics in the Parliamentary Labour Party have said that MPs should once again choose the shadow cabinet, an arrangement that was in place until Ed Miliband abolished it in 2010.

The move is seen as an attempt to regain internal power in the party and remove it from the leader who currently picks Labour’s top team at Westminster.

Corbyn did not set out the details of his plan to involve grassroots members and insisted he wanted a discussion on the issue.

However, he stressed the leader’s office should retain some control over who sits in the shadow cabinet.

Corbyn said: “I understand the feelings, a proportion is fine, but I do think that there has to be also a recognition that we have a system where the leader is elected by the membership and supporters as a whole, and clearly the leader has a mandate coming from that election and has put forward various views.”

However, Smith dismissed the Labour leader’s claim that he was attempting to “reach out” to critics and called for shadow cabinet elections to include MPs and not rank and file members.

Smith told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme: “It’s presented as apparently being a conciliatory gesture by Jeremy. It isn’t a conciliatory gesture, it’s not simply an attempt to extend democracy in the Labour Party. It’s an attempt to deepen divisions between new members and MPs.

“It’s an attempt to further cement his position and use the membership as a means of driving a wedge between the MPs and his leadership.

“I’m in favour of us having more democracy in the Labour Party but I don’t think Jeremy and his team can get away with saying that this is all about an olive branch when really and truly it’s about deepening the divisions that he’s created in the party.”

The proposals will be presented to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) tomorrow, when a decision could be made on whether they become policy.

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s Dispatches said it had uncovered fresh evidence that Corbyn-backing grassroots group Momentum is being influenced by “hard-left revolutionaries”.

It said one has advocated a “flood” of leftists into Labour while others back mandatory reselection of anti-Corbyn MPs.

Shadow defence secretary Clive Lewis, an ally of Corbyn, dismissed the investigation of Momentum as a “red under the bed scare story” and a “hatchet job”.