A well-liked figure on the Left and Right, but Attal now faces being president’s lightning rod
At 39, Emmanuel Macron was France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte. At 34, Gabriel Attal is the youngest prime minister in modern French history.
He is also the country’s first openly gay head of government, and his new role could see him groomed to run for the presidency when Mr Macron bows out in three years after his two terms.
“He’ll have to go through puberty first,” one former top Elysée Palace aide quipped to The Daily Telegraph.
In a country where the president acts as a “Republican monarch”, the post could also prove Mr Attal’s downfall – opposition politicians have already labelled him a “Macron clone”.
Matignon – France’s answer to 10 Downing Street – has been labelled “Hell” by previous occupants, who are expected to run the day-to-day affairs of state, act as an “airbag and lightning rod” for the president and fall on their sword in times of turbulence.
This was the case for Elisabeth Borne, the former prime minister who was forced to step down on Monday after 20 months as Mr Macron seeks to revive his second term.
Mr Attal is well-liked after a headline-grabbing stint as education minister, and a recent poll crowned him France’s most popular politician.
Handsome, charming and pugnacious , the “Macron boy”, as the media calls him, is, like his boss, known for being an incredibly hard worker and a natural political animal.
His rise has been rapid. A decade ago, he was an unknown aide in the health ministry and a card-carrying member of the Socialists. At 29, he became the youngest ever minister in the Fifth Republic with a junior education post. From 2020, he was a government spokesman and his public profile rose. In 2022, he was appointed budget minister and then took over at education last July.
One of the earliest Macron loyalists, he was seduced by his mentor’s mission to dynamite France’s political landscape and conduct Left and Right-wing policies “at the same time”.
As education minister he appeared to pull that off, maintaining an exceptionally good relationship with most teaching unions while also receiving plaudits from the Right by taking firm action to end September’s row over Muslim abaya robes by banning them in schools.
Mr Attal is one of the few who are able to compete, in popularity terms, with the president’s main enemy, the nationalist Marine Le Pen, and her youthful colleague Jordan Bardella, who at 28 is even younger than Attal.
Polls suggest Ms Le Pen’s National Rally is on course to trounce Mr Macron’s Renaissance group, whose campaign is likely to be run by Mr Attal’s civil partner, Stéphane Séjourné.
While Mr Attal and Mr Séjourné deny being one of France’s top power couples, Le Monde says they form a formidable partnership.
The Macron camp’s lack of a majority in the National Assembly will continue to create the same problems for Mr Attal as his predecessor, with every law a trial against a surging hard-right opposition and a turbulent Left. How Mr Attal will handle this and forge alliances with the conservative Republicans remains to be seen.
Above all, it will take all his political skills to help redefine Mr Macron’s hazy – some would say rudderless – political vision for the next three years.