Who could have believed that Gabriel Attal, praised on all floors of the Macronie for his verbosity and his oratorical ease, would be less mischievous than Élisabeth Borne? Less provocative. More academic. Where her predecessor had allowed herself some – slight – witticisms, it is a Gabriel Attal with martial verve who takes to the podium of the National Assembly this Tuesday to pronounce his general policy declaration. Armed with a machine gun, the young Prime Minister delivers his speech mixed with authority and coldness. The tone continues the warlike rhetoric of Emmanuel Macron during his recent press conference. The head of state had defended French “rearmament”; Gabriel Attal plays military music.
Faithful to the institutions of the Fifth, the Prime Minister is a conductor, responsible for setting to music the score written by the President of the Republic during his vows and in front of journalists on January 16. If there was still any doubt, here it is dispelled: this melody is right-wing. By the themes covered, the words used and the measures announced. This is undoubtedly why Gabriel Attal faced the deputies this Tuesday: the man speaks the language of the right and has seized, in his ministerial wanderings, its aspirations. Attal, the pragmatist. The head of government deals with a heterogeneous majority and a country torn by contradictory expectations. In small touches, he takes care to intersperse, here and there, a few left chords to bring the fantasy of “at the same time” to life. Piano piano, it is not on this side of the chessboard that Gabriel Attal intends to trumpet.
Praise of work and authority
Gabriel Attal refuses any partisan affiliation. Who doesn’t want to live off the fruits of their labor? Which Frenchman praises idleness, wishes for anarchy? But he captures these expectations with ideological phrasing. When he speaks about work, it is with a civic tone. He praises the French “at meeting their responsibilities”, pays tribute to the middle classes and sets out a road map dear to the Republicans: “Ensure that those who go to work […] always earn more than those who do not work.” This ode to effort is reflected in announcements: generalization of the conditioning of the RSA to 15 hours of activity, elimination of the specific solidarity allowance and remuneration of civil servants on merit. the left is reassured: the Prime Minister promises the advent of “solidarity at the source” as a guarantee of “social justice”. It costs nothing, at least to say so: this measure appeared in Emmanuel’s presidential program Macron.
When he heard this tirade about work, a Renaissance deputy laughed by SMS: “Together, everything becomes possible!” Doesn’t that remind you of anything? But yes, Nicolas Sarkozy’s slogan in 2007, a campaign aimed at “France which gets up early”. Gabriel Attal appreciates the former president, the two men shared a lunch at the start of the school year. The founder of LR is not his only source of inspiration on the starboard side.
“More words, still words”
The best jam is made in old pots; from old repertoires we pick the best lyrics. Spirit of Georges Pompidou, are you there? “But stop annoying the French!”, the Prime Minister seemed to thunder for several minutes, attacking the standards which “oppress, restrict, prevent action and progress”. Honey in the ears of the mayor of Cannes David Lisnard, who has made this inflation of rules and protocols the crusade of a lifetime.
Like these LR executives who list the number of pages of the Labor Code to better criticize its complexity, Gabriel Attal calls on the 44 million occurrences of the word “norm” on Légifrance to illustrate his fight. The head of government says it bluntly: he intends to “debureaucratize France”. On the program, a new stage in the reform of labor law, the negotiation of “certain rules company by company”, avoiding financial “wastefulness” by removing the bodies which have not met in the last 12 months.
In the hemicycle, the left is rumbling. The right, for its part, walled itself in polite silence. “More words, still words,” chants an LR deputy to put the Prime Minister’s move into perspective. Before admitting, a little contritely, that this speech could be read by one of his own. Like his 61 colleagues, he is subjected to the strong defense of “sovereignty”, the promotion of an “identity which must not be diluted or dissolved” and the desire to “take back our destiny in hand”. Take back control! From Boris Johnson in the text, implicit allusion to a feeling of dispossession.
Insidious attacks against the left
Gabriel Attal has placed respect for authority at the heart of his action on rue de Grenelle. You don’t change a recipe that works. In Matignon, he intends to make it reign “in classes, in families, in the streets”. He provides a safe reading of the riots of June 2023 to better explore this furrow. The Prime Minister announces the creation of “work of educational interest” for those under 16 and “work of general interest” for defaulting parents. But let it be said: there is no question of “overwhelming” certain families. Hence the development of the placement in boarding schools of young people “on the wrong slope”.
The agricultural crisis has put the fight against global warming, the major cause of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term, on hold. Gabriel Attal takes it in his own way. It poses as a reverse mirror of left-wing ecology, synonymous with “degrowth” and “mass poverty”. Follow his gaze… The Prime Minister finally claims to be at the “head of a pro-nuclear government”, breaking with Macronist hesitations on the subject. Is nuclear power right or left? Neither. But with the exception of the communists, its defenders are on the starboard side of the political spectrum. Tell me who your allies are, I will tell you who you are.
Stingy with left-wing expressions
Emmanuel Macron likes to draw on the words of the great figures of the left, from Jean Jaurès to François Mitterrand, via Jean-Luc Mélenchon (“ecological planning”) and even the New Anti-Capitalist Party (“our lives are worth more than their profits “). His Prime Minister is much more stingy with references and expressions from this camp.
Less inclined to appeal to this imagination. There are nevertheless, in this general policy declaration, several measures which relate to the notions of equality and social justice: a bonus of 800 euros for school nurses and an increase of 200 euros in their salary; full reimbursement of wheelchairs for people with disabilities; supporting disabled children during their lunch break; an assumed progressivism on societal issues, such as abortion or end of life…
On the other hand, Gabriel Attal does not skimp on the elements of language and, when the time comes to bite, these seem straight from the little illustrated dictionary of the right. Here he denigrates the “right to be lazy”. There, “the punitive, painful ecology” which “goes through the designation of scapegoats and through decline”. Or again, those who “only have the word ‘tax’ to the mouth”. If the Prime Minister fully claims to be part of the central arc, his words tell another story. Play a completely different music.