Oliver Letwin will today stake a claim for the inner city vote with a pledge to deliver "miracles" in British cities.

The shadow home secretary will take his campaign to Brixton where he will challenge the notion that the Tories are a party of "leafy suburbs and rural shires".

Evoking the words of Martin Luther King, Letwin will say miracles can happen and dreams can come true.

"The Conservative Party is committed and has to be committed to a fair deal for everyone - no-one held back and no-one left behind," he will say.

"To fulfil that commitment, the Conservative Party has to be the party of the inner cities."

Letwin will vow to reopen the debate about how to turn around problems of crime, poverty and poor housing in many British cities.

"We have to believe in our dream of sustainable social progress in the inner cities," he is expected to argue.

"I believe that my political opponents - and many of the commentators - think that the establishment of a neighbourly society in our inner cities is no more than a pleasing, nostalgic pipe dream.

"They think that the problems of the inner cities are so vast as to be insoluble.

"They regard the idea of what I have called sustainable social progress in the inner cities as desirable but naive. I do not agree with them."

He will call for the creation of a "neighbourly society" where people no longer walk by on the other side.

"I recently described myself as a naive optimist who believed in miracles. I am, and I do. I believe in the miracle of the establishment of a neighbourly society - the bringing about of sustainable social programmes in our inner cities. Yes, this is a dream," Letwin will add.

"But only in the sense in which Martin Luther King used that term in his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"It was the greatest speech of the 20th century, and the dream he dreamed that day has surely been coming true ever since.

"We too must have the capacity to dream - and the will to make our dreams come true."