It comes after she was accused of doing so by Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrat party. The bitter back-and-forth occurred during a Scottish Parliament meeting on December 23.
In it, Mr Rennie stated Ms Sturgeon was “oblivious to the irony” of having said it was “unconscionable” for government to carry out Brexit talks in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic while also planning for a Scottish independence referendum.
He added: “I know that the First Minister has supported independence for all of her political life, but holding an independence referendum now, in the middle of one of the worst health and economic crises that this country has ever seen, is not the right thing to do.”
Ms Sturgeon hit back, accusing the MSP of providing a “pantomime” performance.
His comments came amid the publication of an Ipsos MORI poll for BBC Scotland which showed Scottish residents overwhelmingly prefer Ms Sturgeon’s Covid-19 pandemic response to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s.
Of those polled, only 19 percent said they thought Mr Johnson was handling the pandemic well.
In contrast, 74 percent said they thought Ms Sturgeon was handling the pandemic well.
The poll involved 1,037 Scottish adults over the age of 16 between November 10 and November 15.
Rachel Ormston, Research Director at Ipsos MORI Scotland, said: “If anything, perceptions of Johnson’s handling of the pandemic are even worse now than they were in May.”
In addition, a YouGov poll conducted on November 12 found majority support for Scottish independence – albeit by a small margin.
The poll involved 1,089 Scots and found that 51 percent of them thought Scotland should be an independent country, compared to 49 percent who thought the opposite.
It showed support down slightly from August, when YouGov again quizzed the nation on independence from the UK and found support of 53 percent.
YouGov said it was the strongest support yet for Scottish independence in any of it polls.
