SO what did we learn about Jeremy Corbyn this week?

The new Labour leader was firmly in the spotlight for the first time since his landslide election, delivering his speech to the party’s annual conference on Tuesday and then a full round of print and broadcast interviews in the following 24 hours.

The conference speech was delivered firmly and with sincerity, though it is clear he is not a great orator.

While distinctly light on policies, it was clearly a speech aimed at introducing himself to the wider British public and distancing himself from the loony Leftie image portrayed by much of the mainstream media.

So Mr Corbyn showed his nice side.

Don’t believe all the nasty stuff about me. I’m no threat to anyone. I just want to be kind to people.

That was pretty much the message he delivered about himself.

All that was missing was a cardigan and slippers.

There was, of course, plenty of forethought in the speech. Distancing himself from his media image is a sensible move. Voters getting to know what he is about as a person is a sensible move.

But things started to unravel in the round of media interviews that followed the speech.

Mr Corbyn wants to be a different kind of party leader. He wants to take views and opinions from across the Labour movement. He does not want to be an autocrat.

There is much to admire in that.

But he has been elected to lead. And that means he has to take decisions. The buck stops with him when it comes to policy making.

So saying he remains fundamentally opposed to the renewal of Trident is fine.

Saying he wants to hear what the rest of the party thinks is fine.

But if the party decides its policy will be pro-Trident where does that leave Mr Corbyn’s leadership?

How can he stand before the British people at the next General Election and campaign on a policy with which he does not believe?

When asked whether he would press the nuclear button if he was prime minister, Mr Corbyn said he would not because he was opposed to nuclear weapons.

There is nothing wrong with such a view. There is nothing wrong with such principles. We could probably do with such frankness from a few more politicians.

But when your shadow defence secretary, who is against scrapping Trident, responds to your interview by saying it was ‘unhelpful’ and not what she expects to hear from a potential prime minister, then you have a problem.

Mr Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party will be defined by policies not personality.

He wants to beat the ‘nasty’ Tory government at the next election. And so he should. That’s his job.

But he will only do so by wooing people who voted Conservative rather than Labour in May.

He will not win their votes –or anyone else’s for that matter – by being a nice bloke who is kind to people.

He will do it by having policies that are attractive to the majority of those who vote.

If Mr Corbyn cannot get his hand-picked shadow Cabinet to agree with him, what chance does he have with the rest of us?