Keir Starmer has hit back at Nicola Sturgeon after the SNP leader accused him of being "a pale imitation" of the Conservatives.
The First Minister had repeated her claim that Labour was presenting itself as "a more palatable version of the Tories".
But Starmer today hit back and insisted Sturgeon should "roll up her sleeves and concentrate on the Health Service in Scotland".
He also said the First Minister should do more to fix the problems "that are actually under her control in Scotland."
Starmer told LBC presenter James O'Brien: "Look, can I firstly gently suggest to Nicola Sturgeon that she might want to roll up her sleeves and concentrate on the Health Service in Scotland, which is, I mean, we're talking about the ambulance crisis here.
"[There has] been an ambulance crisis in Scotland for a very long time. The military driving the ambulances even last year. The education system is on its knees. So I think that Nicola Sturgeon may want to spend a bit of time fixing some of the problems that are actually under her control in Scotland."
Sturgeon had said that Starmer needed to be more principled and provide a proper alternative to the Conservatives.
She told the News Agents podcast: "People don't want a pale imitation of a Tory government.
"So, you take Brexit, it is inexplicable to people in Scotland that we've now got a Labour leader at a time when Brexit is as unpopular as it ever was in Scotland, but increasingly unpopular in the rest of the UK, that won't even countenance going back into the EU or even the single market and the Customs Union.
"People are crying out for a genuine alternative to the Tories and instead they're getting this triangulating, sort of fudge the difference, just be a sort of slightly more palatable version of the Tories from Keir Starmer.
"I don't know that's what people want… I don't know how you can go from being the Keir Starmer that I and SNP worked with over Brexit, when Theresa May and Boris Johnson were Prime Minister, to be somebody who now won't even countenance the possibility of going back into the single market and say you've got principles. But if I was in Labour... I’d really worry.
"He needs to have a bit more principle, a bit more difference, and actually a bit more guts to take on the Tories and to take on the right-wing media."
This is not the first time that the SNP have said that Starmer is similar to the Conservatives. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said the Labour leader was "a certain shade of blue which I can't quite stomach" in an interview with the Daily Record earlier this month.
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