SNP 'spurned and shunned' Salmond

Senior Nat MSP blasts treatment of ex FM by his former party

- CHRIS MCCALL

ALEX Salmond was "spurned and shunned" by the SNP leadership in the last years of his life, one of the party's senior MSPs has claimed.

Fergus Ewing said there was an attempt by some Nationalists to pretend their former leader "did not exist".

He said: "They spurned and shunned him. In a way, it was comparable to Stalin who, after removing enemies of the state', would wipe all traces of them from official photographs." Salmond died of a heart attack aged 69 last week while attending a conference in North Macedonia.

Officials in the southern European country said last night the former SNP leader's body was ready to be brought home to Scotland.

The North Macedonian ministry of foreign affairs said the "technical work" of repatriation had been completed and they were now "waiting for information regarding the departure time from the Scottish side".

It comes amid a backlash from Salmond's friends and political allies over how he was treated by the party he helped build into an election-winning machine.

"Over the past years, the party he transformed and led to victory turned against him and quite literally erased him from their history, Ewing said.

"They never talked about him or even uttered his name. He made them. They in turn spurned and shunned him.