Former Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam has renewed her attacks on a Number 10 "whispering campaign" which forced her from office.

Mowlam says the attacks against her were orchestrated by Downing Street, and led to her to leave politics at the 2001 general election.

In her autobiography, which is currently being serialised by the Daily Mail, she claims that relations between her and prime minister Tony Blair soured after she received a standing ovation during his keynote speech at the 1998 Labour Party conference.

"Tony handled it well, with a joke, but I knew there would be certain people among his entourage who would be looking at each other with raised eyebrows at such a show of support for someone other than their man," she writes.

In her book, "Momentum", she also accuses her successor, Peter Mandelson, of "quite obviously campaigning for my job behind my back through the media" after reports correctly stated that she would be transferred to the Cabinet Office in the reshuffle.

She also claims that Blair had offered her the positions of either health or education secretary, but "I made clear that those were not jobs I wanted."

The offer was later denied by Number 10.

Mowlam claims her relationship with Blair's closest aides, including communications director Alastair Campbell and chief of staff Jonathan Powell, worsened following suggestions that she would stand for London mayor.

She says she was encouraged to stand as the Labour candidate against Ken Livingstone, but decided against it.

"My refusal to run for mayor was, I think, the last straw for Tony and Alastair Campbell, his chief press officer," she writes.

"Was it coincidence that it was around this time that the most aggressive and vicious off-the-record briefing against me began?"

After a number of announcements were made without her involvement, Mowlam said she no longer felt like a member of the party.

"I was no longer a comrade-in-arms fighting for the same causes. In fact, I was beginning to feel more like a bag of potatoes that they just wanted to dump somewhere so that Peter Mandelson could go to Northern Ireland," she says.

Blair's leadership skills also come under fire in her book.

She says: "What I think was so difficult for everybody to deal with was Tony's attitude that he knows best and he will prove that he is right."