Andy Burnham today calls for Labour to exhume its socialist roots and become the party of "aspirational socialism", running on ideas that include the large-scale purchase of private accommodation by councils.
He also redoubles his campaign for a 10% inheritance tax on estates to pay retrospectively for care in later life, which is aimed at swing voters in the south.
In an interview with the Guardian, the contender for the post of Labour leader set out three policies he hopes will go some way to breaking "cycles of deprivation", with a manifesto to be launched shortly which Burnham says combines the best of old and new Labour.
He said: "I make no apology for it, rehabilitating the S word, it's on our party card, it's what I think we all are, but we haven't felt able to say it for 16 years. It is about everybody looking after each other, in its simplest expression. It's not about levelling down, but people coming together to let people get on and make something of themselves. Those kids without connections, the older people who have worked for everything and who want to keep it. It's a combination of new and old Labour, and that would be the philosophy that captures what I'm about.
"The 'aspirational' is probably the most important word of these two words, because socialism should be about aspiration from my point of view.
"In this country it's still the postcode of the bed you are born in that determines pretty much where you will end up in life, and we must be about redistributing aspiration."
In his manifesto he calls for:
• A national care service in which a 10% tax is paid on all estates after death in order to receive long-term care in old age. Burnham believes that far from the "death tax" it was dubbed by the Tories, it is a policy that invokes the political legacy of Margaret Thatcher and is likely to appeal to their voters, arguing: "This will help the generation of pensioners that Maggie once helped."
• Allowing young people to extend their university funding to support a period of volunteering after study.
• Employers to be legally required to advertise all work experience placements rather than fill them on an adhoc basis.
• The right for councils to buy more privately owned housing to increase their stock immediately.
Burnham is pitching himself as the underdog in a contest he sees as dominated by career politicians who entered Westminster with ready-made contacts. In line with this, he would legally require employers to advertise work experience in order to break the grip of Britain's elites.
To tackle community ruptures caused by immigration, Burnham goes for the root causes of unhappiness over immigration. He would allow local authorities an extension of prudential borrowing permission to buy private rented accommodation into the social housing stock which would very quickly become self-financing for local government, as local authorities would be able to keep the rent.
He said: "One of the big frustrations for councils and MPs is that there are large parts of constituencies particularly in the north and in the Midlands, London as well, where housing was bought up very cheaply 20 years ago in the last recession – and it's now owned by absent landlords who pay no attention to the quality of the accommodation, to the anti-social behaviour sometimes that might go on within the property – they just take the housing benefit, and they show no other interest.
"Councils need to bring that housing under public control, so you then bring more stability and more fairness to those communities, so that people can get easier access to housing, rather than paying huge rates for private rented property." In order to do this he would also help councils buy flats which have fallen into disrepair.
He said of his "flagship idea" of a national care service: "It's true to Labour's roots, but also it's aspirational, because its saying to the generation of working-class and middle-class pensioners who now own their own homes: you can keep those homes, well you can keep 90% of what you've worked for, and that makes it a policy that speaks to social mobility.
"It helps old people then feel confident, the next generation coming behind them can benefit from all that they did in life, to give them a leg up on the ladder."