PAUL KENNY is not an easy man to impress — or to ignore.

The 600,000-strong GMB union he has led for 10 years is a founder member of the Labour Party. Over 80 MPs are also members of the union, as are thousands of Labour councillors across the country.

And he’s worked for the union since the very beginning of the Thatcher era, in 1979.

So when he describes what the party has gone through in the past few months as “the biggest upheaval in politics of my lifetime,” you sit up and listen.

So what’s caused the Corbyn earthquake?

“Huge disillusionment with the slick, managed politics of New Labour,” Kenny says immediately. “New Labour sometimes seemed more like a West End production than a party.

“You hear people go on about New Labour success. They say it ‘won three elections,’ but that’s not really true. The 1997 election was one the Tories lost rather than one that Labour won. They’d lost the country, in some cases they’d lost the will to live.

“And they’d hurt a lot of their traditional supporters. That should have been a lesson for Labour.”

With those massive majorities, Kenny says, Labour had a chance to be “incredibly bold.”

But fighting for employment rights in the Blair years wasn’t much easier than under the Tories: “We were constantly banging on doors.

“Those jewels in the crown of New Labour, like the minimum wage, didn’t fall from the sky. They had to be wrenched from the likes of Peter Mandelson and co.”

Kenny’s biggest criticism of those Labour years is that “they never acknowledged the importance of collective bargaining.

“Instead they were making changes to benefits, bringing in tax credits. Businesses welcomed it — why wouldn’t they? It was the biggest subsidy ever handed over to cash-rich employers. They thought business would always be grateful for putting that money in their pockets. Well, life ain’t like that.

“Combine that with their miserable failure on social housing, despite conference decisions. John Prescott’s doing quite a lot right now to get back in with the Labour left, but I remember Prescott standing up and telling conference: ‘I’m not going to take any notice of you on social housing.’

“They created a plant, watered it and it’s blossomed into the market we have today: £25 billion being paid out in housing benefit and public services groaning under PFI debt.

“Lots of unions, including us, were castigated back then for pointing out that PFI was like buying your house on your credit card.”

What’s becoming known as Corbynomics therefore comes as a breath of fresh air.

“He’s proposing schools and hospitals borrowing at the lowest rates from what’s inevitably becoming known as a ‘people’s bank.’ But there’s nothing new in politics. We used to have a people’s bank — the National Giro. It’ll be a thousand times cheaper than PFI.

“And then look at taking the railways back — it’ll be more popular than anyone realises and it doesn’t have to cost us a penny,” he notes, pointing to Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to take franchises back in house as contracts expire.

Though he spots a flaw: “They’ll make sure there’s some bloody long contracts in place by 2020.”

All in all, it was the whole New Labour deal — “they didn’t surrender to the market, they embraced it” — that lost Labour five million votes between 1997 and 2010.

“It took a while for them to get worried. A thousand people stop voting in Sunderland — so what? But then a thousand stop voting in Nuneaton too.”

That all this has finally provoked a massive backlash in the form of Corbyn’s victory doesn’t surprise Kenny.

“Of course he won. The other three were more of the same. It’s not a winning platform when you’ve just had a substantial kicking in two general elections.”

So is he confident about Corbyn now, despite the vicious attacks on him in the media, from some MPs, even from anonymous military chiefs?

“In the same way [David] Cameron gets flustered by a pig’s head, some right-wing Establishment general talks about suppressing the views of the workers. What’s new about that?

“Let him resign, he can have a nice little job picking up litter on Salisbury Plain.

“The real story about this [Michael] Ashcroft stuff, however, is the deceit around Ashcroft’s non-dom status.

“And it’s interesting that [George] Osborne’s out of the country in China when the attacks come out. And in the Tory-supporting Mail, not the Mirror. What’s that about?

“Plus I haven’t noticed Tories riding out to his defence in significant numbers. This looks like a signal: it’s time for Dave to go.”

Kenny is more concerned about Ashcroft’s poisonous influence on politics.

“Companies he owns or has a stake in get big contracts from the public sector in Tory-controlled local authorities. And he is a major donor to constituency Conservative parties. It looks like public money ending up in Tory coffers. And they want to stop unions giving money to Labour!”

So much for the Tories. But Kenny doesn’t think Labour’s new leader has got everything right either.

“This retreat on the European Union is a big mistake. The EU needs reform. All those ideals of a social Europe, of solidarity and raising pay and conditions to a standard, have been lost. The EU has become an exploiters’ charter,” he explains.

“If countries like Romania were being brought up to a higher level through the EU then we wouldn’t see tens of thousands of their citizens being exploited by British companies.

“Cameron could reform that and he’d have his immigration stats down. But while no-one even in Parliament seems to have any detail on what he’s asking for, it’s clear he’s going around Europe trying to sell off working people’s rights.

“What’ll he come back with? We don’t know. So Jeremy’s original ‘wait and see’ position was correct.

“The CBI, the Tories are desperate for Labour support on this. They’re shitting themselves that they’ve pushed things too far. They want to stay in the EU and they could lose the vote.

“So why give them a blank cheque? That’s bad negotiating tactics.

“We’re facing a government launching the biggest attack on workers’ rights for a generation, trying to cripple the political system by cutting off Labour’s funds.

“And Labour wants us to fund the In campaign, to stand on platforms next to Tory bastards and then to convince our members to swallow it?”

To campaign alongside the Tories, he warns, would be “as bad a mistake as it was in Scotland. Worse.”

As it stands, he charges, the EU is simply “transporting people with lower living standards to new places in order to further lower living standards.”

And he’s pleased that so far, the social conflict this can cause has not got out of hand. But he’s in no doubt that that’s thanks to unions, not politicians.

“When you had the unofficial strikes at Lindsay [oil refinery in 2009], and the BNP was trying to get involved, it was the unions who stamped on the racism, not the government. What was [Gordon] Brown doing? British jobs for British workers.

“Listen, GMB has no record of opposition to the EU — quite the opposite. But Cameron is going around selling off our rights. It’s appalling.”

What’s also appalling is what the Tories are trying to do back home, with their Trade Union Bill.

“There are elements of this Bill. Some we can deal with effectively. Banning automatic deduction of membership fees, the stuff on the political fund. We can overcome all that. Facilities time will be a problem — but we think there will be employers who will help us with that.

“But there are areas where there’s going to be a fight. From outside, the TUC may not look that strong.

“But we were unanimous, from the FBU to the FDA, that we know we will be in conflict and we will do everything necessary to help an affiliate.

“If this goes through, to block it you may see a level of civil disobedience we haven’t seen before. An explosion in unofficial stoppages.

“There’s an age-old tradition of challenging the law if it’s unjust and unfair. We’re not going to play by their rules.

“It’s not about more money, about trade union power, about special treatment.

“These are basic civil rights one party is trying to suppress, not just for now, but for a lifetime. It’s an arrogant, Tory thing — nobody else wants it. Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining.

“Labour was founded by unions. The workers had that dilemma — the streets or Westminster? The brick or the ballot box?

“We decided on Westminster, on Parliament, on a Labour Party. So what happens if that gets taken away from us?

“There’s no point in talking about parliamentary democracy if it shuts us out.

“Would I go to prison? Wouldn’t hesitate. But you’d need more than four coppers to pick me up,” he laughs. “It’d be misuse of police resources.

“But seriously, if you don’t give people a legitimate way of expressing themselves they’ll find another one.

“If a worker has a legitimate beef, they overcome any number of ridiculous hurdles to call a strike, then they have to tell their boss and the police two weeks in advance what they say on social media ... Big Brother? It’s Big bloody Grandad.

“Then after all that your employer can just bus in new workers? It’s a recipe for anarchy. Then when the sticks and stones start flying they’ll talk law and order.

“It’s not whether we fight this. It’s where the fight takes place. The biggest question is, will we call it right?

“Politicians won’t solve this. It’s up to trade unions to deal with this.”

But does Kenny see much potential for trade unions to link up with the huge numbers of young people joining Labour to support Corbyn, for this new movement to play its part in these battles? What does he make of Corbyn’s “citizens’ assemblies” idea?

“It’s not Alice in Wonderland stuff — there’s a huge number of disenfranchised people. If you can re-engage, great.

“There’s a lot of people with different agendas in the Labour Party, but in the end Jeremy won it at a canter — there can be no challenge to the legitimacy of his election.

“Any MPs wanting to do their own thing need to remember they were elected on a Labour ticket, not a personal ticket.

They need to get behind him. He’ll reach out and make alliances. That’s how he’s lived his whole life in Parliament.

“The test will be at the ballot box ultimately, and looking at turnout, not just seats. Can he win people back? It’s bollocks that young people aren’t interested in politics — they are, and they’re often interested for better reasons.

“If they re-engage in England and Wales like they did in Scotland, that’s a game-changer.”