Gordon Brown peppered antique table in rage, MP claims "Danny Alexander and I moved into part of No 12 Downing Street, which Brown had turned into his horseshoe-shaped centre of command, behind which there was a little room called the snug, which looked out over Whitehall," he said as he recounted the tale at a meeting at Hampstead and Kilburn Conservatives headquarters last week. As we worked through the night, I became more and more interested in the fact that this rather beautifully laminated table had a very large number of tiny pock marks on it and I said to the cabinet secretary, 'What are these?' He roared with laughter and said, 'Oh this was Mr Brown's snug and he had his pen and he'd get very angry and he'd go like this' (mimicking downward stabbing motions). Mr Letwin also disagreed with comments made by John McTernan, a former adviser to Tony Blair and Mr Brown, that the Number 10 operation was faltering under the Conservatives.