JEREMY CORBYN, Labour's new leader, is quickly finding out that the unremitting pursuit of hard-line, uncompromising left-wing policies may not be the best way of restoring the party to power.

There are now visible signs of a change in attitude. His vote-losing desire to abolish the monarchy appears to have been put on the back-burner, while there are signs he may be wavering over his equally fervent desire to scrap Trident - "a weapon of mass destruction".

Corbyn does not even enjoy shadow Cabinet cohesion on this second issue, never mind the opposition to his views among a substantial number of his back-benchers.

So it looks as if his determination to scrap Trident, as well, may be shelved, especially as he lost the battle to have the issue debated at the conference. Corbyn's words and actions since his landslide leadership victory suggest he may not, after all, spell disaster for the Labour Party. He has demonstrated that he will listen to all views.

Even so, several outspoken and influential Labour figures - including some of his predecessors - have shown in various ways that they believe he must be got rid of to save the party, in their view, from chaos and collapse.

Corbyn has made clear that he won't allow himself to be pushed out of office and will go only when, and if, a proper election process, according to the party's strict rules, votes him out.

Dumping Corbyn may be more easily said than done.

THERE are now signs, too, that Corbyn's elevation to the leadership could pose as many problems for David Cameron as for the Labour Party itself.

Corbyn set the agenda for Prime Minister's question time earlier in September and there was little that Cameron could do to change things.

Corbyn sounded flexible, which makes it even more difficult for Cameron to attack him with the same ferocity with which he attacked Ed Miliband. That is not good news for the Tories.

And Corbyn is looking a trifle frail and old - although not as doddery as Michael Foot, so it would look like bullying for Cameron to go for him, all barrels blazing.

The best thing for Cameron to do, at the moment anyway, is to hold his venom and let Fleet Street and Labour's own dissident members do the dirty on their new leader.

IT musty be hugely frustrating to the United Kingdom Independence Party to poll nearly four million votes at the general election last May and end up with just a single Member of Parliament.

But they are certainly not doing themselves any favours by allowing a ridiculous feud at the very top of the party to spill over into the public domain.

It is partly about personality clashes involving party leader Nigel Farage, the party's biggest donor, Arron Banks and the Popeye look-alike Douglas Carswell, Ukip's only MP.

It partly has to do with which eurosceptic groups Carswell should support in Ukip's campaign to leave the European Union. Carswell has said he will support any eurosceptic group, whatever their political persuasion.

This led Farage to accuse Carswell, a former Tory MP, of having residual loyalties to the Conservatives, while Banks, more unpleasantly, said that Carswell was "borderline autistic with some mental illness attached".

Ukip should have realised that this kind of behaviour does not win votes and influence people. Party after party have discovered that voters usually repudiate those locked in internal turmoil and dispute.

You would have thought that a policy of quitting the European Union was a pretty straightforward one to handle.

But politicians, being politicians, have managed to make it complicated and fractious.

When will they grow up?

I AM sure many people found it offensive that the Liberal Democrats, at their conference in Bournemouth, decided to publicly deride their late and former leader Charles Kennedy, who died recently and prematurely through drink.

We are assured it was done "in the best possible taste" (they would say that, wouldn't they?) and that his family did not object.

Even so, if they wanted to take the mickey out of their own members, why not start with Nick Clegg? He led the party to the edge of oblivion last May, leaving them with just eight MPs, whereas Kennedy, surely the best leader the Liberal Democrats ever had, boosted their membership to more than 60 MPs.

That was before he was disgracefully booted out of office as the result of a highly unpleasant smear campaign conducted by his own disloyal colleagues.

An ungrateful lot who hit on the wrong target...