Campbell will publish memoirs as soon as Blair quits

Tony Blair's propagandist-in-chief will earn more than £1million from the book detailing his time at No 10, including his role in the naming of weapons expert David Kelly which contributed to his suicide.

He will earn a similar fee for serialisation with Blair-supporting newspapers The Sun and The Times, for which Mr Campbell writes an occasional sports column.

Publishers Random House confirmed they had received the first extracts of the book called The Blair Years and that it would be published as soon as Mr Blair quits, probably in July.

Sources say that Mr Campbell will use the book to settle scores with his opponents in politics and the media in a volume covering Mr Blair's 13 years as Labour leader. His full two million word diaries will be published later as a series.

The book is a ticking timebomb for Gordon Brown. It will come out as he is expected to begin his premiership and could prove embarrassing, since it is expected to lay bare the Blair-Brown civil war.

Mr Campbell is widely believed to have described the Chancellor as "psychologically flawed" - a description which has dogged Mr Brown.

He has pledged to submit his manuscript for scrutiny by the Cabinet Office but opposition MPs say they will be waved through because of his connections in Government.

In contrast, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's former ambassador to Iraq, had to put his memoirs on hold after pressure by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. Britain's former envoy in Washington Sir Christopher Meyer and former No 10 spin doctor Lance Price were also subjected to criticism from ministers for publishing their diaries.

Tory frontbencher Chris Grayling said: "I'm happy to see the irony in Alastair Campbell cashing in on his time in Downing Street given how quickly the Government has sat on other people who have tried to do the same in the last couple of years.

"The person who should be most worried is Gordon Brown, since it may well have been Campbell who described him as being psychologically flawed. I suspect these diaries will blow the lid off the tensions between Brown and Blair."

Liberal Democrat Norman Baker said: "The idea that he should make a mint from a final exercise in spin sticks in the gullet. It seems the wages of spin are really rather good.

"Alastair Campbell should be subject to the same rules of control as would any other civil servant. It will be a test of the system to ensure that he is dealt with in the same way as the Government's critics."

Susan Sandon, managing director of the division publishing The Blair Years said they would be 'the political publishing event of the decade".

Mr Campbell said yesterday: "I have kept a diary at various points but, when I started working for Tony, an occasional habit became something of a daily obsession.

"The diary records what I saw, said, heard, thought, felt and did during many of the key moments of his leadership. It records good days and bad days. Things going wrong as well as things going right."

Allies of Mr Brown claimed to be "unfazed" by the diaries. One said: "There have been quite a few of these sort of books and we have never commented on them."