First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is to set out her programme for government with education at its heart.
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A dedicated website has been set up to gauge opinion on Europe, Brexit and independence while the SNP leader has also instructed all her MPs and MSPs to hold town-hall meetings on the issue.
Speaking in Stirling University yesterday, Ms Sturgeon announced the start of the “biggest-ever political listening exercise” with the goal of speaking to two million voters before the end of November.
People who both voted “Yes” and voted “No” may well have changed their minds, she said.
She said independence would provide “an alternative to just hoping for the best at Westminster”, although she admitted it would present “its own challenges and complexities”.
“The last thing Scotland needs is another drawn-out debate on independence”, he said. While the 2014 poll ended tight in favor of remaining part of the UK, Ms Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party is in favor of seceding.
Several senior advisers have since acknowledged that the idea, which came as the SNP leadership sought to quell calls for a speedy second referendum, had not been expected to receive such a positive response.
The head of Scotland’s devolved government will say that “seismic changes” after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the prospect of a long period of Conservative rule in Britain’s national parliament mean that a new debate on Scotland’s future is necessary.
“Labour are talking about Scotland’s future, whilst the SNP want to drag us back to the arguments of the past”.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats have confirmed they will not support Scottish Government proposals for a second independence referendum in the wake of the Brexit vote.
Friday’s YouGov poll for The Times put support for a Yes vote at 46% to 54%.
Other key findings from the poll shows that 49% of Scots think “Scotland benefits economically from being part of the United Kingdom”.
Scotland’s fiscal deficit hit 9.5 percent of GDP in the year to March, more than twice that of Britain as a whole, hindered by a low oil price.
Political science professor Matt Qvortrup, once described by Salmond as “the world’s foremost expert on constitutional referendums”, said a second Scottish vote would need Downing Street approval.
Polls suggest that just a fifth of Scottish No voters believe that staying in the European Union is more important than remaining in the UK.
He said: “When the Edinburgh Agreement was signed, it only allowed that particular referendum”.
“I’d like to think “yes” because I could have shown that having a child wasn’t a barrier to all this, but in truth I don’t know”.
Heather Anderson, who campaigned during the referendum with the group Farming for Yes, and is now an active SNP member, was surprised but delighted by Sturgeon’s announcement of a summer independence drive.
She stressed the campaign by her party “will be a new debate, it will not be a rerun of 2014”.
Mitchell, however, has found the new membership to be “very pragmatic” and so far show little sign of putting pressure on the popular Sturgeon.
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Another referendum is unlikely this side of the 2021 Scottish parliament elections, he said. There could be a lot of listening – and arguing – done in Scotland before then.
