Other national identities such as "European" and "English" have remained fairly static in Scotland since 1999 at between 1-2%. Among the most commonly cited reasons for the rise in Scottish national identity and coinciding decline in British national identity in Scotland between 1979-1999 is the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher and the consecutive Premiership of John Major from 1979-1997: Conservative Prime Ministers who finished second behind the Labour Party in Scotland though won the ballot across the UK as a whole and implemented unpopular policies such as the ill-fated poll tax in Scotland. The establishment of a devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999 and the holding of a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 have been recognised as factors contributing to a gradual rise in British national identity in Scotland and a decline in Scottish national identity since 1999. Devolution Scottish National Party and Scottish independence The Scottish National Party (or SNP) is a political party in Scotland which seeks to remove Scotland from the United Kingdom in favour of forming an independent Scottish state. The party sat on the fringes of politics in Scotland after losing the Motherwell parliamentary constituency at the 1945 general election, until the party won a by-election in the Labour stronghold of Hamilton in 1967. In the subsequent 1970 general election, the party gained its first seat in a UK Parliamentary election in the Western Isles. In 1970, large quantities of oil were discovered off the coast of Scotland. The SNP exploited this with their highly successful "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign: arguing that during the 1973–75 recession that the oil would belong within the territorial boundaries of an independent Scotland and would help to mitigate the effects of the economic recession in Scotland should Scotland become independent. The party won 7 seats and 21.9% of the vote in the February 1974 general election and won 11 seats and 30.4% of the vote in the October 1974 general election, before losing the vast majority of their seats to Labour and the Conservatives in 1979. A referendum was held on Scottish devolution in 1979, which would result in the establishment of a devolved autonomous Scottish Assembly, however the referendum failed to pass as despite a narrow lead for the devolution side, with 52% in favour of devolution, a low turnout of 32.9% of the entire Scottish electorate failed to meet the required 40% turnout threshold set out by the