2010 United Kingdom general election a troubled Labour campaign. Postal voters in the marginal Vale of Glamorgan constituency had to be issued with new ballot papers after mistakenly being told they did not have to sign applications for postal votes. A group of entrepreneurs warned on the dangers of a Labour-Liberal coalition in an open letter to "The Times" on 29 April. Gordon Brown, while in his Prime Ministerial Car on 28 April, privately described a 65-year-old woman and lifelong Labour voter, Gillian Duffy, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, a Labour-Liberal Democrat marginal seat, as a "bigoted woman". She had asked him about vulnerable people supposedly
Premiership of Gordon Brown announced on 7 June. These showed large declines in the Labour Party's vote. The far-right British National Party won seats in North West England and Yorkshire and the Humberits first ever seats won in a national election. All of these events led to mounting speculation about Brown's future as Prime Minister and a possible leadership challenge. However, Brown faced down his critics and was applauded at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on 8 June 2009. Brown continued to be unpopular; in September, Britain's biggest selling newspaper "The Sun" announced that after 12 years of supporting Labour, it would