She will launch her renewed drive for independence at an event in Stirling, where William Wallace won a historic battle against the English in 1297.
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Scots voted “no” to independence in 2014 by 10 percentage points, but the swell of excitement from the campaign galvanised the SNP.
The Scottish Government is already drawing up legislation that could pave the way for another ballot on independence, and while Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have all vowed to oppose this, the minority SNP administration could see a referendum bill passed if it is backed by the Scottish Greens.
She said the Scottish government would be launching a website to allow people to take part in that “listening exercise”, with SNP members helping to gather the views of at least two million people.
The first minister said in the aftermath of the Brexit vote that the decision should pave the way for a new Scottish referendum.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon listens in the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood in Edinburgh, Scotland, Britain June 28, 2016.
Interviewed by Rhodes for the book Scottish Leaders, serialised in the Sunday Times, Sturgeon said she hoped she would still have gone on to be first minister if she had children.
“Re-heating the referendum debate will only add a further cloud of uncertainty over Scotland’s future, just at the moment when we need a government dedicated to security and stability.”
“This summer we witnessed seismic changes which will have a deep impact on our ambition for this country”, Sturgeon said. How can she please those who voted for and those who voted against the European Union at the same time, whilst the UK’s negotiation strategy and objectives and decided by a cabal of Ministers and officials out of view of the public.
When asked whether she thought she would have achieved so much in politics if she had had children, Sturgeon said that it was an “unanswerable question”.
But Sturgeon said she believed support for separation would increase once the effects of Brexit become clear and argued that the weakness of the main opposition Labour Party meant the centre-right Conservatives could be in power for decades to come.
“And second, important though the issue of European Union membership is, the case for independence is about more than that”.
The Prime Minister has pledged to bring the country back together, but within the boundaries of Brexit, how will she ever know that she has achieved this noble ambition?
With the United Kingdom still in a state of flux post the EU Brexit referendum and most of the nation only just coming back from summer holidays, the Scottish National Party leader made her much anticipated move nearly two years to the day since the failed Scottish independence referendum.
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Friday’s YouGov poll for The Times put support for a Yes vote at 46% to 54%.
