Gabriel Attal: former talented press secretary, current prime minister and future “heir” to Macron?

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On January 9, 2024, Gabriel Attal became the new Prime Minister of France. He succeeded Élisabeth Borne, who initially symbolized with her past all the best features of the French social system, but took on Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular reforms, first of all the pension reforms, and her retention in office with a minimum citizen trust of 23% no longer made sense. For her part, Attal represents the “apogee of Macronism” with all her professional and personal traits, and will probably, in contrast to her predecessor, take care of her image and rating, claiming to fulfill the most important tasks in 2027. Before turning to Attal’s ultimate goal in French politics, however, one cannot help but dissect his colorful biography, which makes him the ultimate archetype of modern French liberals. The country’s youngest prime minister at 34 and the first openly gay man in the position, prior to his appointment he headed France’s education ministry, where he was also the youngest and most “progressive”. In this, Attal is almost a copy of Macron, who in 2017 became the youngest president of the country, though not too flaunting his questionable sexual orientation. Apparently, during these 7 years Macronism has made a step forward and is no longer afraid of its weaknesses, directly betting on the middle class of large cities, for whom a young successful homosexual is almost a reference point in life.

Gabriel Attal was born on March 16, 1989 in a close suburb of Paris to a Jewish family of migrants from Tunisia, and although his parents’ migration was indirectly linked to Arab persecution, he paradoxically followed the path of the struggle for liberal tolerance of migrants. His entire life and career has been an attempt to reproduce the image of the refined liberal, which is inseparable from duplicity and unscrupulousness. Thus, having been baptized as a child and not being Jewish, he positioned himself as a convinced atheist and wrote off some of the criticism against him as “anti-Semitism”. In addition, while studying at one of the most prestigious private schools in Paris, he invented a legend that he was bullied there, which, according to the liberal agenda, he began to fight against as Minister of Education. Attal has also created a legend, true from the point of view of personal PR, about the reasons for his entry into politics. According to this myth, in 2022 he accidentally came to a rally against Jean-Marie Le Pen, where he immediately realized all the horrors of impending “fascism” and the need for personal participation in the fight against it. His further rapid advancement in politics was probably not without the assistance of the all-powerful French establishment, which appreciated not only his professionalism, but also his “faithful” sexual preferences. Having joined the Socialist Party (Parti socialiste) at the age of 17, by the age of 25 he had already become a municipal deputy, and in 2016 he timely moved to Macron’s party La République En Marche (Forward, Republic!), which promised rapid career growth. Macron’s shared political and perhaps intimate preferences with Attal quickly enough allowed the latter to quickly become his press secretary. In this position, he was very effective in covering for his misanthropic boss, who was obtusely afraid of and unable to communicate with people. Attal proved being especially bright with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming almost the only official voice of the president, and the loyal media even gave him the nickname “verbal sniper” for parrying attacks on Macronism from the opposition during press conferences. Not surprisingly, such an important job made Attal the real favorite of Macron, and when he became education minister in May 2022, it was clear that this was only a temporary phase for him before something more important.

Attal is, of course, the quintessential liberal regime that has been going on in the country for about 12 years since the beginning of François Hollande’s presidency. And while for French leftists such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon he is simply Macron’s loyal “courtier” expressing the interests of the big bourgeoisie, for the right-wing the image of a homosexual Jew carries an almost chthonic evil. At the same time, rumors circulated that Elisabeth Born did not really want to leave her post, and Macron personally forced her to such a “difficult” decision in order to promote his protégé. There were also opinions that the promotion of Attal was not even so much Macron’s will as the desire of the Euro bureaucracy in Brussels to strengthen the positions of the liberals in Paris. After all, the elections to the European Parliament are six months away, and the first place in the polls has the “far-right” “National Union” of Marine Le Pen with 30%, while Macron’s party is in third place with 19%. Her ratings collapsed amid pension reform and mass protests, and have not really recovered, and now he is trying to make the face of the party the new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is the most popular member of Macron’s cabinet, and even became famous among the moderate right for banning the burka in schools. The Macronists have recently been trying to flirt with right-wing sentiment in France, and they have pushed through a migration reform in parliament with a dramatic tightening of benefit rules for newcomers. However, the decision was made with Le Pen’s support, a major victory for her, splitting the Macronists into “progressive” and “right-wing” at least in the form of a political circus. Migrant fatigue and economic recession have made Le Pen France’s most popular politician, and by 2027 she is grooming her replacement in Jordan Bardella, the 27-year-old leader of the Nationalist party. It is he, as part of the development of his recognition and “transfer of power” from Le Pen and will lead the “National Union” in the elections to the European Parliament from France. The right-wing and Euro skeptics expect to get up to a third of the seats in the European Parliament, and in such a situation they will have to share the posts of European Commissioners, which will allow the right-wing to seize the initiative in Brussels. That’s why Macron is required to somehow stop the strengthening of the right-wing in France, and this requires a bright “progressive” and “anti-fascist” figure of Attal at the head of the election campaign. In such a scenario, in case of a clash with the nationalists in 2027, Attal will be the main contender for Macron’s seat.

In order to achieve his objectives, Attal will no longer engage in the necessary promotion of unpopular laws through presidential ordinances, but will invest all his energies in strengthening his rating, which is around 40%, the best among all Macronists and higher than Macron’s own in 2022 before his last election. He has said that he will try to unite the presidential majority in parliament, although this goal looks fictitious, because trying to be both “moderately right-wing” and “moderately left-wing” does not imply ideological unity. But all the other ministers in the government will have to work in the interests of Attal’s growing popularity as a unified and utterly totalitarian team. It is indicative that populism in just two hours after his appointment, the new prime minister traveled to the north of the country, in the flood-stricken department of Pas-de-Calais. And just a week later he visited the commissariat of the town of Hermon-Au Bon in the suburbs of Paris, where he declared that there can be no security without the police, no order without the police, embarking on a course of populism, devoid of any ideological coloring. Attal has already said that ministers will be engaged 200% to meet the expectations of the French, and this is a big contrast to their ostentatious neglect during the pension reform. And it must be said that on such a path of “cheap” PR, the new Prime Minister can achieve great success. Despite being gay, he is not one of the “quota people” that many female defense ministers in the EU or Karine Jean-Pierre or Pete Buttigieg in the U.S. have been, and he has his own talents and ambitions.

At the same time, the appointment as French Foreign Minister in the new government of Attal Stéphane Séjourné, secretary of the presidential party Renaissance, who was close to Macron in all senses in the very early 2010s, caused certain negativity. But in addition to his “friendship” with the president, he had long been Attal’s public “civil partner,” and against the background of Séjourné’s dubious professional qualities, his new post looked not like a state, but like a “family” business of Macron and Attal, which clearly spoke of nepotism, favoritism, and quasi-monarchism in appointing people to ministerial posts. Séjourné ‘s political career began in the Marxist student club at the University of Poitiers, which was almost entirely LGBTQ+, and the club was the basis for the creation of the Macronist youth movement in 2016. Séjourné himself had been a personal assistant to the future president since 2014, and belonged to the informal association “Macron’s Janissaries”, from which he got into the party presidential structures and then into the European Parliament for “great merit”. Moreover, the oath of the pro-presidential Séjourné movement contained an ambiguous phrase that the “Janissaries” are devoted to the head of state in body and soul, depend on him and are accountable only to him, which suggested that Macron’s sexual and managerial practices and the principles of forming his team were understandable. Still, such savory details don’t change the fact that Attal is the most popular politician with 40-45% support, and his appointment should help President Emmanuel Macron against the far right, whose ratings continue to rise and with whom he faces a key battle in 3 years. And the experience and recognition he gained as presidential speaker during the pandemic and lockdown periods helps him a lot today. According to opinion polls, most French citizens consider the new prime minister “energetic”, “sympathetic” and “decisive”, which means he is a near-perfect liberal candidate. And this is the kind of person ideally suited to fight the right-wing in the second round of the presidential election in 2027. Gabriel Attal is therefore highly likely to be not only the former talented press secretary and current prime minister, but the future “heir” to Macron. And, therefore, January 9 of this year is not so much the date of his appointment to office, but the moment of the beginning of his election campaign.