Did you miss "of the examples cited" in my post? The examples previously listed were mostly elections while the party was in opposition.
Actually I think I have given six examples to date:
Blair replacing Smith (in opposition)
Cameron replacing Howard (in opposition)
May replacing Cameron (in power, but truncated due to only one candidate)
Johnson replacing May (in power)
Truss replacing Johnson (in power)
Drakeford replacing Carwyn (in power)
I make that majority of example being for a party in power - and in every case the timetable was considerably longer than the 6 weeks for the SNP election.
It seems to me that, as a general rule, elections when the party is in power don't often drag on. Sunak's didn't, neither did May's. Johnson's did drag on a bit. Gordon Brown slipped in pretty quickly (that was probably a mistake). When the party is in power, it seems there is often a lot of pressure for the leader to be decided without a membership vote precisely because of the power vacuum.
But in the case of Brown and May, the reason why the election was quick was because there was only one nominees and therefore the membership election part never happened. Had there been more than one candidate in 2007 or 2016 the process to replace Blair and Cameron respectively would have taken considerably more than 6 weeks had there been the need for a member vote.
And the flip side is also true - had there been only one nominee for the SNP election we'd have had a new leader by now.
But comparing the current SNP with Brown or May is comparing apples and oranges - non equivalents as in the latter cases there was no membership vote due to there being only one candidate while the former requires a membership vote. To compare apples with apples you need to look at either selections where there was a membership vote e.g. for Johnson, Truss, Drakeford or the timetable for Brown/May had this gone to a member vote.
Regardless of the history of leadership elections while in power, wouldn't you accept the a short transition is generally a good thing, provided you don't screw it up?
I said elsewhere that I do not think the selection of a new leader when in office should involve a membership vote as the key distinction is the selection of a new FM/PM and that should be either directly with an electoral mandate or indirectly via elected MP/MSPs. So yes it is preferable for it to be shorter but if you are going to have a member vote it cannot be short as the process gets much more complicated - and particularly so if you have no idea who your members actually are!!