Matignon spares no one, not even those who have been presented as the best of their generation, the “precocious talents” as has long been said about Gabriel Attal. This Thursday, April 18, the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic reaches a milestone, that of one hundred days. Three months in the gilded armchair of the rue de Varenne where he, the daring bet of Emmanuel Macron’s reshuffle, was supposed to give fuel to this already struggling and disoriented second five-year term. Politics is ungrateful, unjust, cantankerous. Those who sang his praises yesterday are pouting today, or no longer hesitate to draw criticism. Like this minister, who keeps him away from the ball of pretenders who would like to succeed the head of state in 2027: “He is not at the level of Édouard Philippe, Bruno Le Maire or Gérald Darmanin. We do not perceive him not in the same way.”
Three months of service, and a lease that is still precarious. The President of the Republic, after appointing him, called for “audacity, action, efficiency”. One hundred days, mission impossible. Efficiency? Struggle. Gabriel Attal was to be the “anti-Bardella weapon” at the dawn of the European elections but the National Rally candidate has never stopped prancing at the top of voting intentions in the polls, far, far away, ahead of Valérie Hayer, the Renaissance candidate. “Have you seen him in the countryside?” pretends to question a member of the government, who echoes those close to Hayer complaining of not being able to count on the unfailing support of the Prime Minister who only made one trip in March with the head of the list . “Emmanuel Macron’s rating agency on Gabriel Attal will be the result of the European elections, warns someone close to the head of state. He considers it acceptable if Renaissance is at 23% and the RN is contained below 30. Otherwise, it will be considered a failure.” And since you are never better served than by yourself, Emmanuel Macron has planned to get involved in the campaign, and not just a little with a “big speech on Europe” planned by now at the end of April, a “Sorbonne II”.
“What I embody is authority”
We saw Gabriel Attal flying to Canada, holding out to the deputies in the new format of questions to the government: only one on stage facing the parliamentarians of the lower house. The Europeans are definitely not his concern. Should he seriously be the poster boy for the campaign, as some have asked? The French, it seems, expect him more in his role as Prime Minister than as leader of a majority. And the vote is in June, it’s so far away. Who is in charge of this? Doing the opposite would be a gift to Jordan Bardella. “We’re still struggling a bit,” grumbles a member of the government who finds “that the campaign is starting too late” while other dynamics – that of Raphaël Glucksmann, in particular, which is worrying – are taking hold. And our minister to rely on Emmanuel Macron: “I hope he will relaunch the campaign.”
Gabriel Attal has other fish to fry, those that he has identified for a while, which he considers priorities. The government of her predecessor, Élisabeth Borne, had failed to provide a clear response to the riots which followed the death of young Naël, killed by a police officer. He, on the other hand, did not see his popularity increase during his six months at National Education, and in particular when he banned the abaya? “What I embody is authority, duty and the response to the disintegration of society”, such is the mantra of Gabriel Attal in Matignon who is going, this Thursday 18, to Viry-Châtillon, town of Essonne still in shock after the death of young Shemseddine, beaten up near his colleague. A trip under the seal of “authority” and an interview the same evening, on BFMTV. A trip, an announcement… The “Attal brand” is this, but it hardly convinces the majority. “Politics takes a long time. We must not get addicted to the short term and enter into competition with the populists on the yakafokon,” warns a deputy from the left wing.
And after ?
In Viry-Châtillon, he will talk about justice but also about school and its role. The Prime Minister is counting heavily on the text of the law on juvenile delinquency, led by Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti and planned for the start of the school year. Gabriel Attal, the hyper Prime Minister, sees further than a hundred days, than six months… No one doubts it.
But he linked his destiny to that of Emmanuel Macron. And if the latter cannot constitutionally represent himself, the results of the five-year term will be that of Attal or any other successor who presents himself on the starting line of the presidential election of 2027. The solitary adventure is a strategy which had succeeded for Macron in 2017 but that no Macronist will be able to plagiarize in 2027. And these words from a minister: “Gabriel knows that we live together, but he forgets that we die together too.”