Long before the days of Photoshop, officials for underhanded regimes were doctoring photographs to suit their leaders’ whimsy.

Like a Facebook-obsessed teen purging pimples from his profile pictures, Russian Communist leader Joseph Stalin liked to have former comrades who displeased him removed from official pictures.

In one notorious snap originally showing a group of four, Stalin ends up alone. You might not be surprised to hear that sort of crass censorship isn’t relegated to the past.

In a quaint attempt at historical revisionism, it seems the Tory party may have tried to delete all the speeches its leading MPs made before they were elected completely from the internet, thus erasing any trace of its green pledges.

Luckily for us, Greenpeace has kept a copy of the choice speeches, words coming back to haunt our esteemed Prime Minister and his Chancellor like the ghost of Hamlet’s father hounding his treacherous brother Claudius.

In November 2009, Osborne declared: “Under a Conservative government, the Treasury will no longer be the cuckoo in the nest when it comes to climate change. If I become Chancellor, the Treasury will become a green ally, not a foe.”

Lines like this have laid the foundation for the UK’s growing green economy. Fast forward four years to the prospect of a “rollback” on green levies in the Treasury’s next Autumn statement next month and it seems the Chancellor is about to eat his words.

Perhaps one day in those pictures of Cameron hugging a husky, the wolfish doggy will be replaced with a big fat oil drum.