KEZIA Dugdale has provoked a furious reaction after she launched a highly-personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon, claiming Scots no longer see her as “mother of the nation” and that the First Minister was not someone she would want to have a drink with.

Dugdale also maintained that Sturgeon was more divisive than Alex Salmond.

The "mother of the nation" epithet is a derogatory term used only by Sturgeon's opponents. Dugdale maintained that there had been a "shift in the public's attitude towards Nicola” and claimed the case for independence had collapsed.

She said “anger” and “resentment” had hardened towards Sturgeon because of opposition to a second referendum.

However, she came under withering fire for focussing her pre-election attack on the SNP and independence rather than the Tories.

The First Minister's spokesperson responded, “If Kezia Dugdale spent half as much time attacking the Tories as she did attacking the SNP then her own approval ratings might not be so appallingly poor."

Adding that Dugdale had been left embarrassed by Jeremy Corbyn's UK Labour adopting the SNP's anti-austerity stance.

“Scottish Labour’s record has been exposed by the fact that Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto now champions many of the popular SNP policies she and her colleagues have spent years deriding," the spokesperson said.

Scottish Labour unveiled Office of National Statistics figures which Dugdale claimed showed the risk to Scotland’s economy from a successful second independence referendum, with the figures revealing Scotland had a net fiscal deficit of £15.176 billion in 2015-16, up £223m from £14.953bn in 2014-15.

Labour also claimed every other country and region in the UK with a net fiscal deficit saw a fall in this deficit in 2016, compared with 2015.

Dugdale said the figures demonstrated Scotland’s reliance on North Sea oil revenues and were a blow to the case for independence.

She said: “These official figures expose the risk to Scotland’s economy from Nicola Sturgeon’s plans for a divisive second independence referendum.

“When every other country and region in the UK has seen a fall in its deficit, or moved further into the black, this should set alarm bells ringing in Bute House [the First Minister's official residence].

"It is a tragedy that she is prepared to inflict further pain on our economy and working families across Scotland."

Dugdale also said Sturgeon was proving to be “far more divisive then Alex Salmond”.

She said: "I've noticed a noticeable shift in the public's attitude towards Nicola in particular. If you were door knocking two years ago there was a sort of a 'mother of the nation' deal – people saying wasn't she doing well."

Dugdale said that now "people are just angry" over the plans for a second referendum and over the state of public services.

She said: "They watch her on television and hear her talk about independence, but they feel like they answered that question [on independence]."

When asked whether Sturgeon was less popular then Salmond, Dugdale said: "I think that would be quite a feat. On a personal level I never really got to know Alex Salmond. I never sought to get to know him.

"I'm not sure I'd relish a pint with either," Dugdale added when asked whether she preferred Sturgeon or Salmond.

Turning again on Sturgeon she said: "Their anger towards her, their resentment towards her has hardened. So before they might not have liked her politics that much, but now that's much stronger and there's anger and resentment towards her.

"There's a real polarisation in the way that people feel about her.

"But the reason that's so damaging is that at the end of the day she's the First Minister of Scotland and her job is to unite the country by providing some common purpose and direction for the country, but she's proving to be far more divisive than Alex Salmond."

The SNP also hit back at Dugdale's claims that difficulties facing the oil industry had harmed the case for independence.

SNP Aberdeen South candidate Callum McCaig said: “Labour are making themselves sound ridiculous – claiming there are virtually no oil revenues and at the same time that Scotland is over-reliant on them. The facts show that Scotland is one of the wealthiest parts of the UK outside London.

“But we need strong SNP voices standing up for Scotland at Westminster – and voting Labour in Scotland just risks letting Tory MPs in the back door.”