Ms Sturgeon said all polls since then had shown increased support for independence and added: “I suspect support for independence will be even higher if it becomes clear it is the best or only way to protect our interests”.
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The first minister of the devolved Scottish government said Britain’s June vote to leave the European Union, dragging Scotland with it, had shifted the debate dramatically just two years after Scots voted by 10 percentage points to reject independence.
“We want to understand in detail how people feel about Europe, Brexit and independence”.
He said: “If the SNP were really listening to the people of Scotland they would be focusing on the bread and butter issues that matter to Scots like our public services”.
That view was echoed by the Liberal Democrats’ Willie Rennie, who called for an extra 1p on the Scottish rate of income tax to raise money for education, while the Scottish Greens’ Patrick Harvie said that not enough progress had been made towards a “fairer, more equal and healthier” Scotland.
“We’ve got to formulate a position which represents the best interests of Scotland the best interests of the United Kingdom”.
The programme lays out the Bills that are to be brought before the Scottish Parliament between now and the end of June next year, with Ms Sturgeon saying it represents the “hard graft” of turning the SNP’s manifesto from the May Holyrood elections into reality.
“My view is absolutely clear, I think Kezia is a fantastic, young, strong, woman leader of the Labour Party in Scotland and she is doing a fantastic job in hard circumstances, having inherited a set of circumstances where Scottish Labour is at a very low ebb, and she’s got Jeremy Corbyn hanging around her neck like a millstone”, he said.
Ms Sturgeon claimed ner campaign would be a new debate and not just a rerun of the ideas discussed ahead of the 2014 poll that saw Scots vote by 55% to 45% in favour of remaining part of the UK.
Ms Sturgeon was deputy first minister and Scottish health secretary when she and her husband Peter Murrell, SNP chief executive, lost the baby in the early months of pregnancy in 2011.
A 62-percent majority of Scottish voters had opted to remain in the European Union, putting Scotland at odds with England, which voted to stay.
Centre-left leader Sturgeon said the survey would be conducted through a website and by polling party members, aiming to reach two million people, or around half the electorate.
In extracts from the book in the Sunday Times magazine, Ms Sturgeon said she is uncertain if she could have been a mother as well as leading Scotland’s devolved government.
Sturgeon now wants to gauge opinion on whether independence is a viable alternative again and under what terms, a person familiar with the plan told Reuters.
The programme comes on the day the Scottish Government announces 29 new or refurbished schools will open in this academic year.
As well as investing in “vital infrastructure”, she stressed ministers are “stepping up our support for business in the wake of the referendum”.
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The opposition Scottish Conservative Party said a second independence referendum was “utterly unjustified and unnecessary”.
