Giving a speech in the town where “Braveheart” William Wallace won a historic battle against the English, the Scottish First Minister said she would trigger the “biggest ever political listening exercise” to convince voters a second referendum is needed.
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The SNP has pushed for Scottish independence for years and Sturgeon was an instrumental figure during the last referendum campaign and vote, when she was deputy first minister of Scotland under Alex Salmond’s leadership.
The UK’s referendum vote to leave the European Union was won 52 per cent to 48 per cent – but Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in Europe.
Sturgeon added: ‘Today we are launching, as the first phase in our new campaign, the biggest listening exercise in our party’s history. “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”, Sturgeon wrote.
“People don’t want to hear more tub-thumping on independence, they want to know she is focused on the day job the SNP has neglected for so long”.
“Do we control our own destiny as a country or will we always be at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere?”
Referring to last week’s government expenditure and revenue Scotland figures – which revealed a deficit of almost £15m – as “not a verdict on independence but an indictment of generations of Westminster government”, she announced a new party growth commission, chaired by the former MSP Andrew Wilson.
“All in all, we plan to talk to at least two million people across Scotland between now and 30 November”.
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 news came on the day that the SNP laid out their legislative agenda for the coming parliament, in which she set out “how we will seek to protect Scotland’s interests, particularly our economic interests, in the wake of the European Union referendum”.
She said this democratic deficit had been exacerbated over the summer by the “self-indulgence” of the Labour party, which had opened the door to “perhaps decades” of Tory government by its “self-destructive” behaviour.
“Can there be a coalition across the United Kingdom that gets the United Kingdom into a more sensible position?” she said.
“If you look at some of the results that are now coming out of polling in Scotland, they suggest the Scottish people don’t want there to be a second referendum”.
Her speech in Stirling on Friday morning took place nearly two years after the September 2014 referendum, which saw Scots vote by 55% to 45% in favour of remaining in the United Kingdom.
A Child Poverty Bill is “arguably the most important piece of legislation we will introduce this year”, Ms Sturgeon said, while there will be a new Climate Change Bill and fresh legislation on land reform after earlier measures from the government were criticised for not going far enough.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie claimed Ms Sturgeon had already decided independence was the answer to Brexit.
Scots voted against independence in 2014, but the issue came up again after the Brexit vote, when Scotland overwhelmingly chose to stay in the EU.
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He told party members: “In a No Borders approach we will oppose independence, we will support strong relationships with Europe and we will work for public services that can liberate people to achieve more in their lives”.
