The Sun has confirmed that its former editor Kelvin MacKenzie has left the newspaper after he was suspended for writing a column comparing the footballer Ross Barkley to a gorilla.

News UK, the publisher of the Sun and the Times, said on Monday that MacKenzie, who edited the Sun between 1981 and 1994 and has written a weekly column since 2015, would not return to work after being suspended in April.

“Further to our statement on 15 April that Kelvin MacKenzie’s services as a columnist for the Sun were suspended, we can confirm that Mr MacKenzie’s column will not return to the Sun and his contract with News Group Newspapers has been terminated by mutual consent.”



MacKenzie is a longstanding ally of owner Rupert Murdoch, but is the latest in a string of senior editorial figures at the media mogul’s companies who have been forced to step down in recent weeks at a time when his 21st Century Fox television company is bidding to take full control of satellite broadcaster Sky.



News UK has severed all ties with MacKenzie, including divesting the stake it held in his financial advice website A Spokesman Said. “News UK is no longer a shareholder in A Spokesman Said Ltd,” said a spokeswoman. “The shares have been transferred to Kelvin MacKenzie.”



He is also understood to have given up his office at News UK’s London Bridge headquarters, from which he ran A Spokesman Said.



News UK refused to comment on whether MacKenzie had received a severance payment. MacKenzie said he did not want the controversy over the column, which is still being investigated by police, to tarnish his history with the newspaper.



“I refuse to allow this latest controversy to cast a shadow over the decades of great times I have had with the Sun,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities out there and I agree with Winston Churchill, who said: ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’”



Last month, MacKenzie was suspended by the Sun after he wrote in his column that he was not surprised that Barkley, whose grandfather is Nigerian, was punched in a nightclub because he was similar to an animal in a zoo. He also said the only other men in Liverpool who earned similar amounts of money to the Everton player were drug dealers.



Liverpool’s mayor, Joe Anderson, reported MacKenzie to police for what he said were “racial slurs” and Everton banned Sun journalists from its stadium. Merseyside police are continuing their inquiries into the incident.



MacKenzie has been a controversial figure in Merseyside since the Sun published a front page with headlined “The Truth” after 96 Liverpool fans died in the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

Following reports of MacKenzie’s impending departure last week, Anderson said there would be a “sense of relief and celebration on the streets of Liverpool”.

News UK apologised for MacKenzie’s comments and the Sun removed the article from its website on the afternoon of Friday 14 April, the day it was published. In a written apology to Barkley in the Sun, the newspaper said it had been “unaware of Ross Barkley’s heritage and there was never any slur intended”.

Speaking last month about the outcry over his comments, MacKenzie said: “I had no idea of Ross Barkley’s family background and nor did anybody else. For the mayor of Liverpool and a handful of others to describe the article as racist is beyond parody.”

In the US, the Murdochs have been dealing with allegations of sexual harassment at Fox News, which have led to the exits of the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, and one of its best-known presenters, Bill O’Reilly.

Wendy Walsh, one of the women who has accused O’Reilly of sexual harassment, her lawyer Lisa Bloom and Douglas Widgor, who is representing 21 alleged victims, have met the UK regulator to call for Fox to be blocked from taking over Sky.

Ofcom is running two investigations into the proposed £11.7bn takeover, looking at whether the deal will give Murdoch too much control of UK news media – he will control the Sun, Times, Sky News and radio station TalkSport – and if he is a “fit and proper” owner of Sky.