After Jean Castex and Elisabeth Borne, it is Gabriel Attal’s turn to settle down at the Hôtel de Matignon. Younger, less “techno”, benefiting from wider sympathy capital, the one who has everything of the ideal son-in-law is one of the best and most faithful defenders of macronism, to the point where from 2018, the newspaper The world already gave him the title of “lawyer of the macronie”.
Indeed, if the man is an excellent communicator, he does not escape the criticisms traditionally made to the presidential party: the “at the same time” is a politically unidentified object. In fact, Gabriel Attal is such a good soldier that it is difficult to see if, behind the spokesperson who defends body and soul the action of the majority, there remains a citizen with his own convictions. But is it nevertheless fair to say that Gabriel Attal, and through him the presidential party, think nothing?
When we examine his numerous interventions since his entry into politics, it is an understatement to say that Gabriel Attal is faithful to his reputation as a good soldier. Between excessive use of elements of language and inveterate defense of the action of the presidential majority, it is almost impossible to find moments when politics fades to make way for the man or the activist. Almost always, it is the representative of a political camp who speaks, almost never letting the true substance of his thoughts shine through. Especially since he never published anything that could provide information on his ideas.
A generous analyst would see, rather than insincerity and philandering, the qualities of loyalty and dedication of a politician capable of putting his ego and ideas aside in the service of a collective project that goes beyond him. A more teasing observer, on the other hand, would not fail to note, as Frédéric Beigbeder rightly did on the set of the show “We’re not in bed.” in April 2018, that Gabriel Attal is “visibly a robot”. Indeed, the man is so smooth that he sometimes exudes a certain coldness and, inevitably, a lack of humanity. It’s not for nothing that the best fictional characters are those who have rough edges and imperfections, without which they are neither endearing nor credible.
“Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s Movement”
However, it would be a caricature to conclude that Gabriel Attal is just a vulgar communicator without convictions. A look at his political career can allow us to outline the contours of an easily identifiable political thought. Gabriel Attal is, whatever some of his detractors say, above all a man of the left. As proof, a certain number of elements and reflexes which do not deceive. He declared that his political vocation was born in 2002, at the time of demonstrations against the presence of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. Before supporting Ségolène Royal, candidate of the Socialist Party in 2007, Gabriel Attal participated in the movement against the CPE (First Hire Contract) in 2006 alongside unions and left-wing parties. It was on this date that he joined the Socialist Party for ten years. More recently, on the migration issue, he said he was shocked by the stiffening of Manuel Valls and he dissociated himself from Gérard Collomb, then Minister of the Interior, when the latter considered that migrants were doing “benchmarking“.
These few elements indicate that Gabriel Attal is part of a reformist left. He himself also recognized belonging, when he was in the PS, to the “Dominique Strauss-Kahn movement”. This left is characterized by a strong attachment to the legacy of 1789, to humanism, universalism, secularism, and more generally to the Republic as it was constructed under the Third Republic. On the institutional level, it defends a political liberalism characterized by the separation of powers and the defense of a certain degree of autonomy of the individual in relation to the community. On societal issues, she advocates moderate progressivism in the name of defending the rights of minorities. Economically, it supports a regime mixed, between state interventionism, high level of redistribution and acceptance of a regulated market economy. Finally, it recognizes the benefits of globalization while being attentive to the social and environmental consequences of industrial societies.
The history of the left since the 19th century is that of an eternal strategic dissension between revolutionaries and reformists, between those who think that the advent of a prosperous and egalitarian world will only come from the overthrow of the capitalist system, and those who believe that the system can be changed from within, in stages. It is to this second left that Gabriel Attal definitively belongs. But for Attal as for the presidential party, this reformism, this welcome opposition to revolutionary utopianism has transformed into a very particular form of depoliticized technocratism, incapable of carrying an ideal and an overall vision. The refusal of utopia has transformed into a refusal of politics.
Utilitarian positioning
As a result, these few doctrinal clues hardly allow us to predict the type of policy that will be pursued by the Attal government. First, because of the devaluation of the role of the Prime Minister in relation to the President of the Republic, a fact inherent to the institutions of the Fifth Republic and reinforced by the practice of power of Emmanuel Macron.
Above all, the transition from two-party to three-party politics has established two poles with a “revolutionary” and “populist” tendency (LFI/RN), and a reforming central bloc, made up of the alliance of left-wing social democrats. and right-wing liberal democrats (Renaissance). On this new political spectrum, Macronism has gradually abandoned a “political” positioning, in the sense of the defense of ideas, norms and values which are by definition relative, in favor of a utilitarian positioning and a technical and technocratic discourse. , by placing himself as the only defender of rationality and political realism in the face of adversaries accused of utopianism and demagoguery. The opposition between different conceptions of an ideal, between distinct scales of values, has been replaced by a binary antagonism between realists and ideologues.
In this sense, Gabriel Attal is a chemically pure product of macronism: his speech essentially consists of placing himself on the side of “responsible”, “realistic” and “rational” policies. By doing this, he neutralizes any form of political debate since he never enters into quarrels over values. As proof, his defense of the latest pension reform or the Student Orientation and Success law, promulgated in 2018, for which he was rapporteur. In these two cases, Gabriel Attal presented the government’s position as the only responsible position taking into account “reality”.
While the social democratic positioning is usually rooted in a rich and complex intellectual history, it is clear that Gabriel Attal’s “at the same time” macronism lacks a clearly defined ideological structure. He is not the bearer of any vision. On the contrary, it appears to many as a technocratic discourse defending a certain form of status quo. Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, its main merit is to demonstrate enough flexibility to follow the twists and turns of the political situation.
Perhaps, as a result, we are reaching the limits of the synthesis between left-wing social democrats and right-wing liberal democrats. However, the risk, in the absence of a politically identifiable and assumed project, is to witness the return of revolutionary utopias. To protect themselves, the defenders of liberal democracy, whether they tend towards socialism or liberalism, must accept that the collapse of the USSR did not mark the definitive victory of their model. The end of history is not for tomorrow, and liberal democracy will need something other than technocrats and communicators.
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