Guardian will be dead in a decade says MacKenzie

The Guardian may be the Newspaper of the Year but Kelvin MacKenzie in his Sun column today predicts it won't survive the next ten years.

After sending his congratulations to Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger for taking the top accolade at this week's Press Awards, MacKenzie sticks the boot in.

He claims the Guardian's "circulation fell on Monday to an all-time low of 200,000" and adds: "Over the next month, my bet is that it will plunge even further and within a decade will have ceased publication entirely as its losses - around £40 million a year - become unsustainable."

MacKenzie describes the Guardian as "strangely left-wing" and says Rusbridger is on £500,000 a year "while all his readers are skint".

The former Sun editor has never been a fan of the Guardian, describing it as the WWN (the World's Worst Newspaper). He also says the News of the World phone hacking inquiry is a "piddly, politically motivated witch hunt".

• Interesting post from Malcolm Coles on why the Guardian's future really does look bleak - and why he wants to give it more money. He writes: "I've gone from paying £230 a year for weekday news to £4. The collapse in what I pay is because I read most of the news for the next day’s newspaper on the Guardian website on my iPad the evening before. And I read anything new on my iPhone on the way to and from work. The newspaper has nothing in that I need."