Emmanuel Macron consulted a great deal and hesitated a long time. In the end, the French of state chose to change his prime minister for the third time since he was first elected back in 2017. After Édouard Philippe, Jean Castex and Élisabeth Borne, it is education minister Gabriel Attal who is taking over as head of government.
Twenty months after his re-election in 2022, President Macron has opted for a political shake-up in a bid to get out of the quagmire into which his second term of office has fallen. Exit Élisabeth Borne, who was weakened by the government's lack of an absolute majority at the National Assembly, and by the laborious adoption of the pension reforms and of the new immigration law. And in her place comes Gabriel Attal who brings with him – at least, so the Élysée hopes – his popularity in opinion polls and his proactive image.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The appointment of the 34-year-old as head of government has all the ingredients of a surprise. And it has indeed sparked surprise. No one in his own circle, in the ruling majority or in government was expecting to see him appointed to Matignon – the prime minister's official residence in Paris – barely six months after becoming education minister. “I don't see why the president would make this choice,” one of his allies said on Monday afternoon well before the announcement. But the head of state ultimately did so, though after one final hesitation: an announcement had been expected in the wake of Élisabeth Borne's departure on Monday afternoon, but in the end news of her successor was not announced until late on Tuesday morning.
Ministerial offices had been awash with different rumours in the days before. The names of Sébastien Lecornu, the minister for the armed forces, and Julien Denormandie, the former minister of agriculture, had been widely mentioned in discussions about who would become the new prime minister. Even the theory that Élisabeth Borne could remain in post, something which was judged unlikely over Christmas and the New Year, won the backing of some keen observers, including at Matignon where the president's indecision was taken as a sign of hope.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Gabriel Attal's appointment has thus caused astonishment, not least given his high profile in relation to his predecessors. Until now Emmanuel Macron has always been careful to appoint prime ministers who are not well known to the general public; a provincial mayor, Édouard Philippe, in 2017; a senior civil servant, Jean Castex, in 2020, and a minister with the mindset of a state prefect, Élisabeth Borne, in 2022.
This time, however, the French president has chosen one of his most high-profile ministers, a darling of the opinion polls, and a veteran media performer. Speaking on France 5 television at the end of December, Emmanuel Macron said he was “very happy” and “very proud” to have “helped” such a “talent” to “emerge”, applauding his minister's “energy” and “courage”. When she appointed Attal to the education portfolio in July 2022, Élisabeth Borne told his predecessor Pap Ndiaye: “We need a bruiser.”
At the time she doubtless had no idea that this “bruiser” would then replace her six months later. A supporter of Emmanuel Macron in 2016, the former socialist has undergone a dizzying rise to power under the wings of the current head of state. He was elected as a Member of the National Assembly in 2017 and spent just one year there before joining the government. He was successively a junior education minister, government spokesperson, minister for public accounts and then education minister.
Unforeseen appointment
And now, after a ministerial career so rapid that he had little time to unpack his bags, he is prime minister. At the Ministry of Education the first time he worked under minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and oversaw the start of the new universal national service or SNU. As government spokesperson he hopped from television studio to television studio during a period marked by the Covid pandemic. At the Treasury he launched a plan against social security and tax fraud and supported lower taxes for the middle classes.
However, there was very little in the way of a legacy, as he spent too little time in each portfolio to really make his mark. At the Ministry of Education the second time around, however, it was noticeably different. In only six months the “young Gabriel” - as Jean Castex used to call him - issued announcement after announcement: a ban on wearing abayas or traditional dress at school, an anti-bullying plan; a pilot scheme to introduce school uniforms, reforms of the brevet or national diploma and the baccalauréat exam, streaming in maths and French at middle school, and the reintroduction of the policy of certain pupils being asked to retake a year.
This frenetic bout of announcements forged his political identity: “My guide is effectiveness,” he boasted to the National Assembly in December. “On secularism in school as with the rest, I don't take stances, I take decisions,” he said. On top of this kind of grandstanding, the minister has acquired the habit of adopting issues that he thinks public opinion wants to be addressed, making a political decision based on them, and then using his media skills to publicise his decision.
Gabriel Attal's talent for political communication has made him one of the most popular ministers in the presidential camp. At the National Assembly his interventions are often the most applauded among the ranks of the majority. And even in the government itself several colleagues privately concede how much their colleague “impresses” them. The step from there to seeing him as prime minister, however, was such a big one that no one - or practically no one – had imagined it.
According to several people who spoke with the president, Emmanuel Macron himself did not have this option in mind as late as Monday. “Atttal won through a process of elimination,” says one of them with a smile. Faced with the refusal of former Assembly president and long-time Macron loyalist Richard Ferrand, with the abandonment of the idea of Julien Denormandie as an option, and with the rejection internally of Sébastien Lecornu as a candidate, the president in the end appointed his education minister. But to do what? For the time being that political question remains without an answer.
Extreme malleability
Aside from the “energy” that the head of state identifies in him, what does the new prime minister actually represent? From the point of view of his personal journey, Gabriel Attal becomes the first head of government in France's history to be openly gay. In terms of his background, his schooling at a prestigious private school in Alsace in the north-east of France was a millstone around his neck when he entered the Ministry of Education.
Otherwise, defining Gabriel Attal's political line is not easy given his extreme malleability. A former socialist activist, then a local councillor at Vanves in Paris's south-west suburbs, the new prime minister worked for five years under the presidency of François Hollande (2012 to 2017) as an advisor to health minister Marisol Touraine. Once becoming a minister under Emmanuel Macron, he took up all the old rightwing refrains such as reducing the public deficit, the issue of social security fraud, the row over the wearing of abayas in school, school uniforms, the desire for authority in the country...
After the initial bounce, a sense of change and any short-term pick-up from this move, what will remain of Gabriel Attal's appointment as prime minister? A Macron supporter through and through, the former education minister's presence is unlikely to alter by a single seat the reality that his camp lacks an overall majority at the National Assembly. His political line is the political line of the president to whom, as he is fond of repeating, he “owes everything”.
His arrival in the prime minister's office will perhaps bring back a little dynamism to a ruling majority that emerged somewhat groggy from the debates over the immigration law. His public popularity won't worry Emmanuel Macron, given the impending European elections in June. Popular with the president's voters, the new prime minister is going to have to work hard to get them to turn out, with the threat of a far-right victory currently paralysing the government's strategists.
If one sets aside these electoral considerations, it is hard to see what impact the change of prime minister will in fact have on the next period of a presidential term that has got off to a bad start. The main political direction in terms of social, economic and environmental issues is not going to change; first of all, because they remain under Emmanuel Macron's control, and secondly because Gabriel Attal is arriving in post unprepared, with no experience or known convictions across a whole range of public policies which he must now drive forward.
In that respect his promotion carries risks. The prime minister's office is not like the education or Treasury ministries. It is a machine where everything is decided, through which all public decisions pass, the place where the administration of the state is managed. The man who is now piloting this machine has never worked anywhere other than in a ministerial office, and his entourage is similar too: a group of highly-qualified thirty somethings, loyal and hard-working, but whom nobody imagined taking sole command of an ocean liner such as this.
Mission Impossible 2
The immediate future looks like it will be a challenging one for Gabriel Attal. After staffing his office the new prime minister will have to create his first ministerial team, even though most decisions will be taken by Emmanuel Macron. Already some government advisors wonder what will happen to economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire, his old boss at the Treasury, and to Gérald Darmanin, with whom there is mutual and constant hostility. The first new cabinet meeting of minsters should take place by the end of the week.
After that initial step the new premier will face some political challenges. He will have to appear before Parliament and give a speech on his government's political line, something he has never thought about, face a potential vote of confidence – the opposition are already demanding one – and map out his government's future path. And that path is a windy and damaged one shrouded in fog. The president promised he would set out his future plans to the nation this January but, speaking on condition of anonymity, several government advisors acknowledge that the political cupboard at the Élysée is bare.
Around the president there is talk of extending the SNU national service programme, a new law on euthanasia and of enshrining the right to abortion in the Constitution. Some bills are being drawn up, on youth justice and housing for example, but they are not the kind of measures that will haul the government out of its current difficulties.
So from his new vantage point at Matignon, Gabriel Attal will soon find himself experiencing the same punishment of Sisyphus that ultimately doomed Élisabeth Borne. As good a communicator as he may be, the new prime minister will face the same unsolvable equation as his predecessor, the same lack of an overall majority, the same hesitations and U-turns from the president and the same need to ally himself with the Right, whatever the cost.
His appointment resembles that of Manuel Valls as prime minister ten years ago. In a presidential term that was already bogged down, the socialist president François Hollande got rid of Jean-Marc Ayrault, a prime minister who was loyal but too discreet, and instead appointed his popular and dynamic minister of the interior as head of government. “I have every interest in Valls being as popular and effective as possible, to boost the president of the Republic,” François Hollande said at the time.
What happened next is well known. Though more experienced than Gabriel Attal today, and despite his defiant stance and media savvy, Manuel Valls became caught up in the government's incompetence, opposed by his own Parliamentary majority and, very quickly, faced unpopularity and protests. In the end François Hollande felt unable to stand for a second term, Manuel Valls saw his own presidential ambitions fall away, and Emmanuel Macron became president. As a ministerial advisor at the time, Gabriel Attal knows this story by heart.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter