Lord Mandelson was compared to a Bond villain as all five Labour leadership contenders unanimously condemned his account of bitter feuding during the Blair-Brown years.

David and Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and Diane Abbott all attacked Mandelson at today's leadership hustings in London for the damage that his book of memoirs, The Third Man, has done to the Labour party.

Former foreign secretary David Miliband, who is believed to be Mandelson's preferred candidate for the party leadership, described the memoirs as "destructive and self-destructive".

He compared Mandelson's appearance in a TV advert for the book to that of Bond villain Enst Blofeld, saying all the former minister, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, needed was a white cat to stroke.

Ed Balls, the former children's secretary and a close ally of Gordon Brown, said it was "really sad" that the peer had published the book "in such a devisive and damaging way for such huge amounts of money at this point so soon after a general election."

Mandelson's reputation had nose-dived as a result of the controversy, he added.

Former health secretary Andy Burnham was more forthright in his call for the peer to quit, accusing him of being vain and arrogant. He said: "Peter loves the spotlight but it's time to leave the stage.

"Sadly this has distracted from the leadership contest and damaged the Labour party."

Burham said Mandelson's actions showed the party needed to decisively reject the New Labour style of politics.

"At times it was self-indulgent with the factionalism and people kicking lumps off each other," he told party members at the hustings at the Trade Union Congress headquarters.

Ed Miliband, the former climate change secretary, said Labour party members had been sickened by Mandelson's account because it gave an impression that the last government was "all about factionalism".

He agreed with Burnham that the episode underlined the need to reject the culture of different factions within the party briefing against one another.

Abbott described the memoirs as "self-regarding", saying they overplayed the importance of Mandelson's role in the success of New Labour. She added she had not read the peer's book because she refused to "put money in his pocket". Mandelson, the former business secretary, insisted that he had painted a flattering picture of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

But his revelations about their dysfunctional relationship have led to considerable political fallout and cast a shadow over the Labour leadership contest.

Mandelson denied reports that Blair was livid after being quoted in the book as describing his former chancellor and successor as "mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption".

The former Labour leader Lord Kinnock said the peer had become a caricature of himself and questioned whether he was more interested in creating a sensation than a historical record of the party's last 13 years in office.