Inside the Indyref by Pete Wishart review - 'dismissive of more idealistic sections of the Yes movement'

This book collects his diary entries from 29 June 2013 to 19 September the following year, the day after the vote. It is a detailed account of one of the most extraordinary periods in Scottish political history, but there is little here we did not know already. Call me shallow, but there is also a distinct lack of juicy gossip, which is half the point of these things.

There are some entertaining moments. Wishart is dismissive of the more idealistic, left-wing sections of the Yes movement. When Robin McAlpine of the Common Weal think-tank talks of "class conflict", Wishart responds in his diary: "Yeah, right on comrade, and that's going to go down well in Perthshire and Edinburgh." His SNP colleague Mark McDonald, who later resigned as a minister over misconduct allegations, "fancies himself as a bit of a comic" at the party's spring conference. "Unfortunately for him he's about as funny as Alistair Darling with a headache," Wishart observes. Ouch.

His commentary can also be revealing. Wishart notes Better Together's spokespeople rubbished the Scottish Government's White Paper before they had a chance to read "nearly any" of its 670 pages. But in the very same diary entry, he talks of being briefed on its contents and given lines to "deploy" - including the claim that "all possible questions" have now been answered - without having read any of it himself, either. That's politics, I suppose.

The key moments of the campaign are all here. "All hell is let loose" when George Osborne, the then chancellor, rules out a currency union in February 2014. There is an endless stream of opinion polls, and ludicrous claims are made on both sides about the costs and benefits of independence. History has not been kind to unionist arguments about the EU.

The first debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling, chair of the Better Together campaign, is an "absolute nightmare", a "bad, bad night from which we may never recover". Wishart had previously predicted Salmond would wipe the floor with his opponent, arguing it would be a "slaughter worse than the Bannockburn re-enactment". His frustration and despair are palpable. "I suppose we only have ourselves to blame," he notes on 7 August. "On currency they control the debate." But the polls improve and the second Salmond-Darling TV showdown is much better for the Yes side.

You get a sense of the exhilaration of the campaign in Wishart's breathless account of the last frantic push before referendum day. A poll on 7 September showing Yes in the lead sparks "blind panic" in Westminster. Then there is "The Vow", the famous Daily Record front page in which David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg promised more powers for Scotland. "Phone round a few colleagues to get the response and there is genuine concern that it could kill us," Wishart tells his diary.

The result, when it finally comes, leaves him in a "strange, numbed state", but also with a sense that Scottish politics has changed forever. In his preface to the book, Wishart addresses the SNP's current predicament. The independence movement has fragmented and the party faces "the fight of our lives" in the 2026 Holyrood election. And yet, he writes, the referendum "left a political legacy... that will not be extinguished by the normal diet of everyday politics or cycle of election results".

Wishart's book is not particularly well written and would have benefited from a sharper edit. He thought "long and hard" about whether to have it published, but it is hard to see why, unless chunks were cut out. There is little here to shock or offend, and he doesn't give much of himself away. But political anoraks and Yes nostalgists may find some value in its pages.

Inside the Indyref, by Pete Wishart, Luath, £14.99