Lisa Nandy has criticised Tories for "claiming to be patriots" while leaving children to go hungry in the holidays and stripping power, skills and money from Britain's left behind communities.
Ahead of the Government finally publishing its levelling up blueprint this week, the Labour frontbencher accused ministers of being too divided and "fundamentally" lacking ambition.
The Shadow Communities Secretary also vowed Labour would win back voters' trust saying levelling-up was "personal" to her.
In an interview with the Mirror, she said: "I live in Wigan, my family are growing up there.
"When my child is older I want him to have the choice to be able to stay and to contribute, if that's what he wants to do.
"When I talk to all the people who have children who've had to move hundreds of miles away for work, who don't know they'll see their grandchildren and are growing older alone at the other end of the country. It breaks my heart."
Ms Nandy strongly rejected claims that Labour was not a patriotic party, saying she was "proud to fly the flag".
She said: "I do find it strange that we would face criticism for loving the country that we want to lead. I would say that's a basic prerequisite for seeking office.
"You have to believe in the country and want it to succeed, but that is about more than just the flag.
"When I see the Tories claiming to be patriots, while they're leaving our children to go hungry during school holidays, when I see them stripping power and money out of communities across the country... it makes me quite angry that they could claim to be the patriots."
Ms Nandy claimed the Tories were too divided to deliver on levelling up, with Rishi Sunak's tax hike stripping spending power from communities and putting cash into cities, while leaving "public transport deserts" into regions like the North East.
She said the Chancellor and Michael Gove were also at loggerheads over where skills cash would go.
"The major problem that's emerged for the Conservatives over the last two years is they can't agree what levelling up is," she said.
"And they have a Chancellor who fundamentally doesn't believe that if power and opportunity was spread much more widely, the entire country would be better off.
"We've got a Chancellor who is still very very wedded to a model that puts more and more power and resources into places that are already doing well."
Turning to how the Government would fund skills, she said the shared prosperity fund cannot be used to pump cash into Tory seats and target areas.
"There's a huge issue here. If you're going to move jobs to Darlington or elsewhere, young people in those places have to be able to get those jobs," she said.
"It's not good enough just to move people from London to other parts of the country, you've got to invest in young people in our towns to ensure that they can get the jobs of the future.
"If you want to level up a place, you have to level up the people in it."
The Wigan MP said Labour's £28bn-a-year climate investment pledge would create high-quality jobs in regions and would stop the brain drain to cities.
"The places we're talking about - Grimsby, Barnsley, Aberdeen, Wigan - these are places that within living memory powered this country, and built our wealth and influence.
"We were at the centre of the world, and could be again."
Labour's vision for levelling up would be measured by a growth in local economies and a reverse in deindustrialisation, giving young people the choice to stay close to family rather than "get out to get on" in life.
She said: "For a lot of places like Grimsby, a lot of young people go to university every year and never come back.
"Not because they don't want to but because the jobs just haven't been there.
"We think that people in those places have a level of ambition for their communities and their families that just hasn't been matched by the national government and for far too long.
"And that's what levelling up has to mean.
"It has to mean turning around 40 years of relative economic decline, so that young people have those choices, and those local economies can thrive again."
