THE SNP have furiously hit out at a tabloid newspaper after they published a story in which it was claimed a party webpage had recently been rewritten to cut out Alex Salmond.

The Sun said yesterday that a section which details the SNP’s history on www.snp.org appeared to have been changed on January 15, removing all mentions of the former First Minister.

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It’s not clear where this information or the date came from. An archive search of the website using the Wayback Machine tool, which allows users to read old version of internet pages, has a saved version of the “History” page from September which is the exact same as its current state. This suggests this particular page hasn’t been updated in at least four months.

An old version of a now-unavailable page called “Our Party” can be still be found in using the archive tool. This did mention Salmond, but it also appears to have been written several years ago, as it doesn’t have a section on the independence referendum and also still refers to him as party “leader”.

The story was quickly picked up by other Unionist media outlets, including the Times and the Evening News.

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The National understands that the SNP website has undergone two redesigns since Salmond stepped down as leader in 2014.

The history page is one of the least active pages on the site, is rarely updated, and the party claims it hasn’t been changed for several months.

In the section about indyref1, the new history says: “The 2014 independence referendum was Scotland’s greatest ever democratic event. In the months building up to the vote, the Yes campaign – spearheaded by the SNP and its then depute leader Nicola Sturgeon – engaged with every community in Scotland. Support for independence reached record highs and levels of political participation blossomed across the country.”

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An SNP spokesperson told The National the story was “rubbish” last night. “The Sun concocted this nonsense by comparing a single page of the SNP website from 2011 with its 2019 variant. Alex features as leader in 2011, and Nicola in the latest version,” they said.

The Sun reported that Salmond had said: “Nicola should stop rewriting history and concentrate on making history by taking Scotland to independence.”

Tomorrow’s Sunday National will have the first in-depth interview with Salmond since he won his legal case against the Scottish Government, in which he addresses the Unionist press and the alleged “civil war”.