I only met Salmond once, but I had two immediate thoughts which in retrospect were correct. The first one was, I can see why he's got loads of admirers and also loads of detractors, because he's just got immense natural charisma. Some people do.
My other thought was, I hope he's watching his diet because he looks like a heart attack waiting to happen.
Clearly the man had a massive ego but he also cut his teeth in an SNP that was highly factionalised, where lots of the party leaders couldn't stand him, and where he could only stay leader by making sure that all the factions felt they had a fair shout.
I don't remember him going in for the North Korean cult of personality. That was more a Sturgeon thing. It probably hit its peak during Covid, but before that I remember seeing SNP accounts on Twitter and thinking, the cybernats of yore could be annoying and one-note but they were all about independence, now we've got a new generation who don't seem to care much about independence but who are just Nicola Sturgeon stans.
It was a bit like the way older Greens were motivated by the environment but younger Greens are much more about queer theory.
It all seemed very brittle, especially for a party like the SNP that's a crusade for a cause or it's nothing.
I think it's telling that she left no serious successors in the next generation, and they had to rewind the clock 20 years and bring Swinney back. The only one of the younger generation with real ability is Kate Forbes, and she's leaving next year.