Campbell defends insider diaries

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Revelations that the ex-PM did not want to serve a third term emerge alongside the way he dealt with key issues such as Iraq, 9/11 and the death of Princess Diana.

And he insisted he had not been asked to remove references to new Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who indicated he was not interested in reading the account.

But he had done so to protect the Government and stop Tory leader David Cameron thinking he had "a gold mine to use again at the new Labour Prime Minister".

"I'm not going to deny there weren't times when relations were pretty tense and some pretty harsh things were said, they were," he added.

One entry in the diaries - to be published on Monday - shows that Mr Blair asked advisers in July 2002, months before the Iraq war, if he should step down ahead of a third general election.

Mr Campbell recalls that Mr Blair told him: "In truth I've never really wanted to do more than two full terms" and knew at that point he had had decided that "he would sometime announce it".

"The big question was the same as before - does it give him an authority of sorts, or does it erode that authority, and do people just move automatically towards GB (Gordon Brown)?"

Mr Blair eventually set a limit to his time in Downing Street in September 2004 - announcing he would serve just one more term months before securing a historic third general election win.

The extracts give a flavour of the tensions within the Cabinet in the run-up to the crucial vote on the Iraq war as well as negotiations with US President George Bush.