In addition to being the youngest head of government of the Fifth Republic, the former Minister of Education is the first to assume his homosexuality. Evidence of changing times and advancing mores, this is not a subject for public opinion.
At 34, Gabriel Attal is not only the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic in history, but he is also the first to be openly gay. If before him some may have been, it was discreetly. No one had ever mentioned himself. They have all had wives, husbands, or partners of the opposite sex.
A sign of the times, apart from probably a few ultraconservative circles, his sexual orientation will not be the subject of any debate or dispute. In a not-so-distant time, this would have been unimaginable. The very fact that being gay is considered one piece of information among others (such as one’s age or origins) shows the major advances in public opinion since the adoption of marriage for all in 2013. For Gabriel Attal, speaking freely about his sexual orientation did not go smoothly. Intimately, he only announced it to his relatives when the majority came.
It is close to 2.30 pm, this Tuesday, January 9, when Gabriel Attal slowly advances towards the rue de Varenne. At 34, Matignon offers himself to him, promising to make history as the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic.
This is the end of the endless “waiting bubble” in which the members of the cabinet of the rue de Grenelle have been locked, in their words.
At the time of officially taking up his duties, Gabriel Attal gave his speech with a trembling hand, as if he were feeling dizzy. He warned the head of the presidential Renaissance party, his former companion, Stéphane Séjourné, before any other political leader, of this meteoric promotion, six months after his appointment to the Ministry of National Education. Didn’t Gabriel Attal just set foot in “hell”, the nickname of Matignon, a house capable of undermining promising popularity and thwarting presidential ambitions, such as those of Jacques Chaban-Delmas in 1974 or Édouard Balladur in 1995?
The thirty-year-old, supposed to embody in the eyes of the President of the Republic the “Macron generation”, according to the formula of the Élysée, as there was a “Mitterrand generation”, believes in his star. “The youngest president of the Republic in history has appointed the youngest prime minister in history,” he launches alongside a resigned Elisabeth Borne to join the benches of the National Assembly as a member of Calvados.
With this formula he hopes to relieve the frustration of teachers stunned by his hasty departure from ministry, Gabriel Attal promises to take “to Matignon the cause of the school”, the “mother of all combats”, as he calls it.
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