Alistair Darling will claim in his memoirs that Tony Blair found Gordon Brown so difficult to work with that Blair told him "dealing with GB is like having dental treatment with no anaesthetic".

More details of Darling's attacks on Brown are contained in fresh leaks of his memoirs to the Guardian.

Darling, who was chancellor of the exchequer under Brown as the financial crisis struck Britain, paints a picture of top officials and his senior colleagues as out of touch and aloof, with the upper echelons of government so dysfunctional one top official is accused of trying to undermine the prime minister.

In the book, Back From the Brink, which is to be published next week and believed to be set for serialisation in a Sunday newspaper, Darling reveals:

• He and Brown had shouting matches over the need for spending cuts as the UK's finances plunged into the red.

• He found the Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, "impish" as well as "amazingly stubborn and exasperating".

• As the banking crisis started, King referred to panicked Northern Rock depositors trying to get their money out, and admitted: "I bitterly regret not thinking of these issues sooner – I should have done so."

• Darling's position became so difficult as he repeatedly clashed with the PM that his wife joked he was like the Nazi prisoner Rudolph Hess holed up in a prison on his own.

• A Treasury civil servant attended a meeting where he told Brown that his solutions to the economic crisis were doomed to fail; the mandarin, writes Darling, spent the meeting "languidly peeling an apple with his Swiss army knife".

As well as King and Brown, Darling criticises a host of senior political figures for the economic crisis, and bankers such as the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin.

Describing a shouting match with Brown over the PM's resistance to spending cuts, Darling says: "Speaking truth to power never came into it."

Blaming Brown for hampering efforts to tackle the economic crisis, Darling claims that Tony Blair told him that "dealing with GB [Gordon Brown] is like having dental treatment with no anaesthetic".

It is arguably one of the most barbed comments to emerge from the Blair-Brown feud that dominated Labour's time in office from 1997 to its election defeat in 2010.

A senior Labour MP who worked with Brown throughout his premiership said of the leaked reports that he "simply did not recognise" some of the claims made.

The MP, who did not want to be named, expressed fears that the memoirs will prove to be "very damaging" to the Labour party: "Alistair Darling was a decent and hard-working chancellor who I think was reasonably popular, but I think some of these stories are being exaggerated in the retelling.

"There is a place for political autobiography, but it should be about recording the lessons of history. It is damaging the reputation of politics, and in this instance the Labour party."

Michael Dugher, Brown's former chief spokesman and now Labour MP for Barnsley East, said in response to the latest revelations: "Alistair Darling is a thoroughly decent guy, but the revelation that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did not always get on and that Gordon Brown could be difficult at times is hardly worth queueing outside Waterstone's for."

He added: "Alistair Darling could be pretty difficult to deal with, too. That's just the way it is."

On Thursday, Ed Miliband declined to comment on leaked revelations that had surfaced earlier in the week, other than to say that Darling had a "perfect right to write his memoirs and talk about his reflections on his time in office".

Extracts leaked on Wednesday by the pro-Labour website, Labour Uncut, claimed the book singled out Ed Balls, now shadow chancellor, and former business minister Shriti Vadera who, as key allies of the former prime minister, were running what amounted to a parallel Treasury operation within government at the time.

The website also claimed that Darling reveals Brown unsuccessfully tried to force him out of No 11 in 2009, considering Balls as his replacement.

Miliband said he was concentrating on the issues "facing the country now". Balls, when pressed on the leaked claims, said he had opposed Brown's plan to sack Darling.

Publishers Atlantic Books have denounced earlier leaks that appeared on Labour Uncut: "Following recent media speculation about Back From the Brink, the forthcoming memoir by Alistair Darling, Atlantic Books would like to state that the reports of the book's contents do not fully and fairly represent the author's views as expressed in the book."

The website swiftly removed the stories on Thursday afternoon after receiving legal threats from the publisher.

The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, who has read Darling's memoirs ahead of publication as part of preparations for a BBC documentary series on the politics of tax and spend, fuelled speculation that the book will make explosive reading.

"Sadly I had to sign a confidentiality agreement before doing so," blogged Robinson on Friday morning. "The leaks are a taster of richer fare to come."

Darling on …

… relationships with civil servants

According to the memoirs, a Treasury mandarin told Brown all his solutions to the crash were doomed to fail while 'languidly peeling an apple with his Swiss army knife'

… the way he was treated

Darling reveals that his position was so difficult that his wife joked he was like the Nazi prisoner Rudolf Hess holed up in prison on his own

… Brown

After a shouting match over cuts: 'Speaking truth to power never came into it

… Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England

'Impish' and 'amazingly stubborn and exasperating'

Blair on Brown

'Dealing with GB is like having dental treatment with no anaesthetic'

Brown's former aide on Darling

'Alistair Darling is a thoroughly decent guy but … could be pretty difficult to deal with too'