SCOTTISH Labour leader Anas Sarwar has challenged Nigel Farage to a debate “any time, any place,” as the row over Reform UK’s “racist” campaign advert continues to dominate the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election.

Both SNP and Labour have demanded Facebook remove the attack ad, which uses an edited clip of a 2022 speech by Mr Sarwar encouraging people of Pakistani and south Asian heritage to get involved in politics, to claim he will “prioritise” Pakistani people, despite Mr Sarwar never having said any such thing.

Undeterred, Mr Farage played the ad again at a press conference on Tuesday, denying accusations from across the political divide, including from First Minister John Swinney, that the ad was “racist."

The far-right leader claimed that it “says to me that we are winning.”

Polling in recent weeks has suggested Reform UK could be in contention with Labour for second place in next week’s Holyrood by-election, but speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Mr Sarwar threw down the gauntlet.

“This man has no idea where Hamilton is,” he said.

“What I suggest to Nigel Farage is he should ask his chauffeur to put Hamilton into Google Maps.

“Come up here. I’ll challenge him any time, any place, in Hamilton, any town hall, and he can challenge me on my views, I’ll challenge him on his views, and you can see that the people of Scotland will utterly reject him, because he can’t win there and he can’t win in Scotland.”

Mr Sarwar said that Mr Farage “wants to pretend he’s a great champion of working people across our country.”

The Scottish Labour leader said: “While I was working in Scotland’s NHS in one of the most deprived communities in the country, he was on the Brussels gravy train.

“While I’m campaigning to defend our NHS and save our NHS, this man wants to privatise our NHS.

“There is no doubt that Nigel Farage wants us to talk about him, and there’s no doubt he wants to play up on this divisive rhetoric in order to get attention, because the man craves the oxygen of attention rather than actually wanting to change our country, and that’s the big difference.

“I want to change Scotland, he wants to divide it. This is a man who has got no place in Scottish politics.

“The people of Scotland, by a vast majority, will utterly reject his politics.”