What keeps Ed Miliband up at night?

The Telegraph has a rather remarkable splash on their front page today. The bulk of the piece revolves around a former Cameron adviser who feels that he has been pushed out of the inner circle by the Prime Minister’s clique. It would be a rather unremarkable headline – this kind of thing has happened in Downing Street since time immemorial – if the adviser in question, Shaun Bailey, wasn’t the only notable black member of Cameron’s team. And then of course, there is the small matter of how many of Cameron’s clique are Old Etonians.

Yet Bailey’s fall from favour isn’t the real stand out detail in the piece. It transpires that when asked what keeps them awake at night, Cameron’s clique, after some considerable thought, replied “school fees”.

The cost of living crisis means something different in Downing Street, it seems.

But this comically out of touch response from senior Tories rather begs the question – what keeps Ed Miliband up late at night?

As I wrote yesterday, the Labour leader appears to lack panic and retain remarkable self belief, no matter what brickbats are thrown at him – and there have been many. And yet if he loses sleep over anything, it may well be what he’s being asked to speak on today – how Labour goes about the tricky task of leaping from a single bound to a majority from electoral obscurity.

For today, Ed Miliband is speaking at Progress’s conference on their ” Campaign for a Labour Majority”.

Let us be in no doubt about what a huge task Miliband, and all of us as a party, are faced with on that score. Bouncing back into government at the first time of asking is somewhat rare in British politics – especially after achieving only a measly 29% in 2010. For Ed Miliband to lead Labour to 40% of the vote would take a one term turnaround that makes the upswing from 1992-97 seem almost mundane.

Miliband will speak in front of a room of people today who are perhaps on the whole less optimistic about his chances of achieving that complete turnaround than some others in the party. Let us be frank, Progress would not be launching a “Campaign for a Labour Majority” if they thought that was the most likely outcome at present. They think that at present we’re going to fall just short. Largest party territory. That would still be an achievement, but it’d suggest the days of majority government might be behind us for a decade or more.

So when Ed stands up this afternoon he needs to do two things. He needs to convince not only those present, but more importantly the party as a whole that Labour is on course to win outright in 2015. (Don’t worry about the country at large – they aren’t listening to political speeches on a Saturday afternoon – that’s the preserve of the political obsessive.) But Miliband also needs to project the sort of steely determination that is fuelled by his tremendous self belief. He needs to convince the attendees of Progress conference that no matter what they might have heard in other sessions today, Labour cannot just win next time, but can win well – and is, in fact, winning already.

That’s why in his speech today he’ll say that One Nation Labour is the modernising force in British politics today – a clear steer that he sees this as a continuation of the modernisation project, rather than a fundamental break from it.

It’s also a less than subtle hint from Miliband that he feels Progress should be giving him their full throated support.