The Scottish Parliamentary election of 2021 will be remembered as the vote when a defiant Alex Salmond finally got a seat at the table.
Unfortunately for the former FM, it wasn’t exactly the place at the “top table” of Scottish politics he would have preferred.
In one abiding image from the count at Aberdeen’s P&J Live Arena, Salmond sat all alone at a battered trestle table, idly checking his phone.
Strewn in front of him were the remains of takeaway coffees and bottles of Lucozade that had sustained the enthusiasm of Alba activists until it became clear the dream was dead after all.
Maybe the rest of his supporters had gone home to bed, or maybe they had simply deserted their captain, but old battler Salmond stayed to go down with his ship.
He cut a melancholy figure, as he realised that his Alba was likely to fall well short of the votes needed to secure a list seat between Banffshire and Buchan or Donside.
Ach well, he reasoned. Alba had been formed “too quickly”.
They’ve only had six weeks to make an impact.
Would he stand again as leader after the new party’s conference, scheduled to take place in the summer (in a small caravan somewhere, perhaps)?
No, he wasn’t committing to that.
“I will decide that in the course of things,” he said, enigmatically. Never say die, eh Cap’n?
Though the soft-hearted among us may feel a little sorry for a man who so clearly does not know when his moment has passed, let’s remember what took him to that place of isolation.
Call his motivation what you will – a need for revenge against his one-time SNP pals or a genuine belief that he is the only person who can take this country forward – but his failure to acknowledge the self-inflicted damage on his reputation, means he never deserved a political return.
This country will continue to wrangle with its emotions: trusting, in incredible numbers, the SNP to govern the nation while remaining unconvinced we are ready to be led out on the independence limb.
If that leaves us with a government of many political colours, who have to work with others to get policy through, that’s no bad thing.
But Salmond doesn’t get to have his say any more. And that’s no bad thing either.
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