John Swinney's attacks on Labour show the SNP's campaign is "floundering" and "desperate", according to Anas Sarwar.
The Scottish Labour leader was on a visit to the Govan Pantry food bank with his party's candidate Dr Zubir Ahmed at the Pearce Institute in Govan, Glasgow today when he hit back at comments made by the SNP leader at his party's campaign launch yesterday.
During his speech to candidates and activists the First Minister said the general election on July 4 is the “biggest challenge the SNP has had for years”.
And while he said the people of Scotland “want rid of this disastrous, chaotic Tory government”, he attacked Labour for "giving an awfully good impersonation of" the Conservatives.
READ MORE: Analysis: FM in push to win back soft Yes supporters
“The only substantive change Labour seem to be offering is to change their own core principles," he said.
Asked about the comments today Mr Sarwar said they showed the poor state of the SNP's campaign and listed a number of Labour policies which his party believe will make lives easier for Scots.
"John Swinney is giving a good impersonation of Rishi Sunak in terms of using the Conservative party having an unelected leader imposed on our country by a party rather than the country," said the Scottish Labour leader.
"John Swinney insults the intelligence of people across Scotland. We've had 14 years of Tory chaos and failure and his focus is not on getting rid of the Tories is on attacking the Labour party."
READ MORE: Swinney says Labour giving 'good impersonation of Tories'
He added: "What my focus is on is on getting rid of the Tory government that is doing so much damage to our country.
"If he thinks giving a pay rise to Scots across the country is a bad thing he can answer to that. If he thinks having a publicly owned energy generation company which is going to make billions of pounds of investment in Scotland a bad thing, he should answer to that.
"If he thinks scrapping the non dom tax which will put more money into the NHS - giving 160,000 more NHS appointments every year while on his watch there are 800,000 Scots on waiting lists, he has to explain why that is a bad idea.
"This shows it is a floundering campaign and a campaign which is desperate to attack the Labour party rather than take on what this should be about in getting rid of a rotten Tory government which has done so much damage to Scotland over the last 14 years."
Earlier the SNP's Westminster leader and Aberdeen South candidate Stephen Flynn said it is "deeply disappointing" that Labour and the Conservatives are pushing for "massive privatisation" of the health sector.
Mr Flynn said his party would bring forward a Keep The NHS In Public Hands Bill to protect the health service.
However, Scottish Labour's health spokeswoman, Dame Jackie Baillie, hit back at Mr Flynn's comments as "outright lies" as she claimed the NHS, which is a devolved matter in Scotland, is on "life support" following the Scottish Government's handling of waiting lists.
Writing in the Daily Record, Mr Flynn wrote: "In Scotland, this election is a chance to unite to stop the Westminster threat to our NHS. It's our chance to keep the NHS in public hands and a chance to reject the Westminster austerity agenda that continues to damage Scotland."
He said Mr Swinney has accepted that the NHS in Scotland faces "huge pressures", particularly as waiting times in A&E continue to soar, with 9,603 patients waiting longer than the four-hour target to be seen and either admitted, transferred or discharged.
But Mr Flynn added that "the NHS's problems will never lie in selling it off to the private sector - the answer lies in stopping Westminster austerity".
He said the law would "bind the hands of the UK government - ensuring our health service is fully protected as publicly owned, publicly operated, and with its services publicly commissioned".
During his speech at the Radisson Blu in Glasgow yesterday Mr Swinney referred to comments by Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, claiming he has been “criticising the Tories for not using the private sector enough”.
The SNP leader said: “That sounds an awful lot like creeping privatisation of the NHS to me. The SNP rejects privatisation of the NHS whether that is Tory privatisation or Labour privatisation.”
Hitting back today Mr Sarwar accused the SNP of spreading "misinformation" about Labour and the NHS and said Mr Streeting had said "he would rather die in a ditch than privatise the NHS".
Labour is challenging the SNP across dozens of seats, particularly in the west and in the central belt.
The latest poll published on Friday put Labour on 37% and the SNP on 33%.
According to an analysis by Professor Sir John Curtice, on those figures, Labour would win 28 Scottish MPs, up from their current two, while the SNP would drop to just 18 seats (down from 43 currently and the 48 it won in 2019).
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