Also Something Of An Ambitious Political Chameleon
Attal, a son of privilege, has long appeared to be on a rocket ride to the top of French politics. As of today, he’s in the number 2 position in the country, prime minister, the youngest ever to hold that office. He’s also the only openly gay head of government in the world. He began his career in politics as a socialist. Recognizing it as a career dead-end, he quit the socialists in 2016 to join Macron’s centrist vehicle, En March (now called Renaissance). Before he turned 30, he was the youngest cabinet minister in the history of the Fifth Republic (Secretary of Education, where he banned abayas in schools). He was elected to the lower house of Parliament last June.
A communications expert, admired for knowing how to think of his feet, he was spokesman first for Macron’s party and then for the government (2020-2022). Recent polling shows he’s the most popular politician in France.
He’s in a civil union with another high profile young politician, Stéphane Séjourné, a member of the European Parliament, although they seem to have broken up. He has described being bullied by anti-Semites and homophobes in school, particularly a classmate, Juan Branco, a Green, then a socialist and later a right wing populist (Yellow Vest movement, something like MAGA) who was once Macron’s attorney (as well as Julian Assange’s), and has become a very controversial figure, ctedibly accused of drugging and raping a young woman. He outed Attal on Twitter in 2018. He’s like a less successful French version of Kyrsten Sinema— and Attal’s bête noire.
Kim Willsher reported this morning that “In the past decade, Attal’s politics appears to have shifted from the centre-left to centre-right. In 2018, he responded to strikes by staff at SNCF, the national railway company, saying France had to ‘get out of the strike culture’ and accused students protesting against changes to the education system as ‘selfish bobos (bourgeois Bohemians).’ Macron— once known as ‘the golden boy’ of French politics for his youth, dynamism and ambition— will be banking on the youthful, dynamic and ambitious Attal to invigorate a government weakened by its lack of parliamentary majority and enthuse a younger generation of disillusioned voters in the run-up to the European elections.” Attal doesn't have a majority in Parliament and will find it hard to get much of anything accomplished.
This morning, Le Monde noted that “By appointing Attal to the premiership, the president– weakened by his relative majority in terms of MPs in the Assemblée Nationale– is implicitly admitting that he needs the education minister's popularity to breathe new life into his mandate. One of the few recognizable faces of the ‘Macron generation,’ Attal will have to carry out Macron's ‘civic rearmament.’” The neo-fascists, led by Marine Le Pen, are in position to beat Macron in upcoming elections.