Rarely do political relationships mirror each other the way former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and former Canadian prime ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin did.

The closely drawn parallel was something Blair noted too, in his memoir, "A Journey," released this week.

Much like how the sponsorship scandal dragged down Martin after he succeeded Chretien, Blair said Brown blamed him for the House of Lords donation scandal that threatened his new prime ministership.

Blair, the longest serving Labour prime minister in British history, said Brown "was in a venomous mood" when they met to discuss the transition of power.

"I can truthfully say it was the ugliest meeting we ever had.

"To be fair to (Brown), for some reason he thought this whole donations business had been a way of my leaving him with some frightful scandal, a sort of ticking bomb that would then wreck his leadership in the same way, as he put it to me, Jean Chrétien had done to Paul Martin in Canada," Blair writes.

"It was all nonsense, of course, but I think Gordon may have genuinely believed it," he added.

Martin had levelled similar accusations about Chretien in regards to the sponsorship scandal that eventually cost the Liberals in the 2006 election loss to the Conservatives.

Blair said he identified closely with his Canadian counterpart.

He describes Chretien as "a friend" and said the former Liberal prime minister "a very wise, wily and experienced old bird, great at international meetings, where he could be counted on to talk sense, and, as Canadians often are, firm and dependable without being pushy. All in all, a good guy and a very tough political operator not to be underestimated."

Blair also asked Chretien for advice, such as during an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in England.

"Watch that, young Tony, watch it very carefully. That's trouble," he recalls Chrétien telling him.

Blair has little to say about Martin however, despite their time in power overlapping for a little more than two years.

With the Canadian government under Chretien deciding not to join the Iraq invasion in 2003, Blair appears to be done discussing Canada, particularly when Martin became prime minister later that year.

Blair became prime minister in 1997, winning in a landslide election, and stepped down in June 2007. Like Chretien, he won three consecutive majority elections.

At 43, he was elected one of the youngest prime ministers in British history.

While he was initially elected on a largely domestic platform, such as carrying out regional devolution, the North Ireland peace accord and introducing the minimum wage, Blair's legacy will be shaped around his foreign and security policy.

Under Blair, British troops took part in both the Afghan and Iraqi wars, and his foreign policy was closely tied to the United States in the "War on Terror."