Opposition parties have called on Sturgeon to focus on her “day job” of running Scotland, saying she needs to concentrate on improving public services rather than pushing for independence.
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SNP organisers intend to reach at least two million people across Scotland using a new dedicated website, town hall events, and the 120,000 members of the party itself, each of whom will be required to ask five people a month to fill in a survey card indicating their views.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will mark the opening of the parliamentary session with a pledge to deliver policies that will help increase prosperity and create a fairer country for everyone in Scotland.
Ms Sturgeon said she had not discussed her miscarriage in public before because she did not want to be defined by it.
Scots rejected independence by 10 points in a referendum in 2014.
Her spokesman said that the programme for government would be about domestic issues, but that Europe would be a “common theme running through everything we do” going forward.
Despite Sturgeon’s insistence that the Brexit vote had shifted Scottish opinion, a YouGov poll for the Times Scotland on Friday suggested the figure in favour of independence had barely shifted over the past two years, despite the June referendum.
Some doubt Scotland would now opt for independence given that it rachets up economic uncertainty during an already clouded outlook due to Brexit.
Another referendum is unlikely this side of the 2021 Scottish parliament elections, he said.
She will find no support on these benches for a second independence referendum. “Some of us simply don’t want to, some of us worry about the impact on our career – and there is still so much to do, through better childcare, more progressive working practices and more enlightened attitudes, to make sure we don’t feel we have to choose”. I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know the answer. “I’d like to think yes, because I could have shown that having a child wasn’t a barrier to all of this, but in truth I don’t know”, she said.
“It is disappointing that, days before laying a legislative agenda before the most powerful Scottish Parliament ever, the SNP are determined to drag us back to the arguments of the past”.
Prime Minister Theresa May scored a rating of +13, while Scotland First Minister Sturgeon landed a positive rating of +20 – just behind Scotland’s most highly-rated leader, the Scottish Conservatives’ Ruth Davidson, on +21.
The economy was one of the major concerns for Scots voting in the first independence referendum, and is now an even bigger concern given the variability of the European economy following Brexit.
Scottish Labour and Tories yesterday vowed to oppose the move.
Davidson said: “This is a chance for Nicola Sturgeon to show the country she is serious about being a First Minister for all”.
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She insisted that she would continue to pursue all available options to protect Scottish relations with the European Union, but confirmed that civil servants are drafting a referendum Bill “so that it is ready for immediate introduction if we conclude that independence is the best or only way to protect Scotland’s interests”.
