After a weekend of speculation concerning Tony Blair's future as prime minister, allies of Gordon Brown have attempted to play down rumours of further faction-fighting.

"Is it really in Gordon Brown's interest to go around destabilising the prime minister, the Labour Party and the wider Labour movement at this stage in the parliament?" one Brown adviser told the Guardian.

Following reports that the prime minister was close to resignation last month and had to be talked out of it by at least five cabinet colleagues, a "senior" Downing Street official commented: "This is about an episode when things were choppy. The mood is very different now."

In addition, Brown's adviser Ed Miliband has denied claims that he questioned former Downing Street communications director Alastair Campbell over Blair's departure during a meeting last week. Campbell has also denied this version of events.

Meanwhile, today's Sun claims that Blair is to insist on a full third term as prime minister if Labour wins the next election.

Blair's former foreign secretary, Robin Cook,  today describes the apparent failure to inform the prime minister that Saddam was not thought to have any usable WMD before the war as "the most extraordinary failure of communication in the history of the British intelligence agencies".

Cook makes the claim in a new edition of his memoirs, serialised in the Guardian.

The Daily Mirror also reports that attorney general Lord Goldsmith, who gave the legal go-ahead for the war in Iraq, could lose his job with the publication of the Butler report this week.