The BBC’s Andrew Neil took Ms Sturgeon to task over Scotland’s health records under the leadership of the Scottish National Party (SNP), and even suggested the country’s health service needed saving. Ms Sturgeon struggled to defend her government’s health record amid a slew of missed waiting times targets and the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital scandal. The scandal involved the death of two children in cancer wards due to contaminated water, leading to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde being placed into “special measures”.

Before December’s general election, Mr Neil posed challenging questions to the Scottish First Minister.

He said in November: “You’ve called for legislation to protect the NHS from Donald Trump. Maybe the NHS needs legislation to protect it from Nicola Sturgeon?”

He also pressed Ms Sturgeon on her claims that Scotland would be worse off in the UK, but better off in the EU.

Mr Neil asked how she could cite research claiming Brexit could cost Scotland 80,000 jobs while “independence would create no trade friction with the UK, no job losses, no loss of living standards, nothing to see here, just move on”.

The First Minister said EU membership had diversified the Republic of Ireland’s export base and pointed out “we don’t yet know what the UK’s final relationship with the EU” will be.

She added: “When we have clarity on that, we have to understand those implications and we have to set out clearly how we deal with those implications in order to keep trade flowing between Scotland and England which is in our interests and in the interests of the rest of the UK.”

But many politicians in Scotland fumed at the SNP leader, branding her a hypocrite.

Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, said Ms Sturgeon had received “a doing on the hypocrisy of her Brexit vs Indy position and a doing over her domestic record in health”.

Paul Masterton, the Scottish Tory candidate in East Renfrewshire, said: “The reason the First Minister can’t give a timetable on what might happen to Scotland after independence is because the SNP doesn’t know what will happen. Yet still she insists we must have another referendum next year.”

Pamela Nash, the chief executive of Scotland in Union, added: “These deluded claims from Nicola Sturgeon are an attempt to mislead voters. It would also almost certainly lead to a hard border with England, with massive economic and social consequences.”

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The Telegraph described the exchange as a “car crash interview”.

A month later, Ms Sturgeon received yet more criticism from Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party Jackson Carlaw, who claimed her domestic record was filled with “embarrassing failures.

He said: “First Minister, you can run from your record of missed targets but you can’t hide from it.

“As we enter 2020, we’ve seen PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) figures show science and maths performance at record lows, violent crime going up for the fourth year in a row, NHS Greater Glasgow suing the construction firm which built our largest hospital, commissioned by Nicola Sturgeon.

“And embarrassing failures in public transport on sea and rail. Some might even say that it is unarguable that every public service in the care of this SNP government ends 2019 in a worst state that when the year began. Surely in 2020, fixing this should be the priority of any government worthy of the name.”

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