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Monday 15 February 2016 9:31 am

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will have to quit by 2020, warns GMB leader Sir Paul Kenny

By: James Nickerson

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Jeremy Corbyn will have to resign as leader of the Labour party by the 2020 General Election as he is failing to provide a "credible alternative" to the Conservative party, a top union leader has warned.

General secretary of the GMB Union Sir Paul Kenny said that Corbyn never actually "wanted to win" the leadership contest and that Corbyn's senior team has demonstrated naivety.

Read more: Alan Johnson talks Labour and the EU referendum

"The object of the exercise here is to emerge with a credible alternative to the Tories for power and at the moment we are not doing that," Kenny told the Times. "There is a naiveness in some people that ‘these are the things where we have gone along to rallies and meetings and people have cheered us for saying them, so this must be what the rest of the country thinks'."

"So all I can say is get out more. It is not what the rest of the country thinks," he added.

Read more: Labour's performance in polls is worst since late 1940s

Kenny – who is leaving his post in the coming weeks – made his most recent comments after he previously issued a warning to Corbyn that the union would not back down easily if Corbyn attempts to change the Labour party's policy on Trident. 

The move comes as Corbyn prepares to make a speech attacking Cameron's migrant benefit curbs as "discriminatory".

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