With national governments impotent to act or, at least, constrained to behave in ways largely consistent with the interests of international capital, it seemed to some British democratic socialists in the 1980s and 1990s that only a multinational pursuit of their objectives was feasible. To assume otherwise was “to cling to national sovereignty [and] in practice, to hand sovereignty over to the global marketplace”. In Britain, this attitude of mind became particularly widespread in the 1980s and was reinforced by the manifest failure of the Mitterrand experiment that seemed to confirm that the policy autonomy of the nation state was now severely circumscribed. The conclusion that many inevitably drew from this was that what was no longer feasible nationally had now to be pursued at an international level and, in particular, within a European framework. “Social democracy and democratic socialism”, argued one writer, “can only be achieved today as European concepts; in national terms these ideals become more illusory and hopeless every day.” A unilateral Keynesian assault on unemployment had failed in France because of capital flight, growing current account deficits and pressures on the franc. But a multilateral Keynesianism would not have to confront balance of payments and exchange rate pressures and would have the international financial support necessary to cope with whatever capital flight was provoked.