Expected to become Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal began his political career on the left. However, the boss of LR highlighted a few months ago the minister’s affinities with the right.
Gabriel Attal, future Prime Minister from the left? The young Minister of Education, who arrived in government in 2018, is in pole position to replace Elisabeth Borne. Gabriel Attal campaigned in the Socialist Party for ten years, before joining Emmanuel Macron’s party from its earliest days. On paper, the minister therefore fits into the left wing of the executive. A label which has however been questioned by a tenor of the current right, in the person of Eric Ciotti.
“For a left-wing guy, you’re more right-wing than me!” The boss of the Les Républicains party would have launched at the beginning of October to Gabriel Attal, in private, according to L’Express. A remark which aimed at the start of his mandate at the Ministry of Education, where he was appointed on July 20, 2023. Since this date, Gabriel Attal has been talked about by taking decisions which in fact place him rather in the traditional right-wing agenda. Starting with the announcement of the ban on wearing the abaya in schools, on the eve of the start of the school year in September.
If you were on the right, what would it be…”, Eric Ciotti would have said to the young minister. Since his arrival at the Ministry of Education, Gabriel Attal has also defended the experimentation of wearing the uniform at school. At the end of December, he announced a reform of the secondary cycle involving the establishment of level groups, signaling, for many observers, the end of the single middle school.
For his part, the 34-year-old minister defended himself from any drift to the right: “The expectation of authority is not specific to the right-wing electorate,” he told L’Express in October. “In the same way, when I defend secularism, mastery of fundamentals or the fight against harassment, I do not choose one camp or another.” Gabriel Attal, however, admits to having left the left for the center: “I am betting on being fully part of Macronism, he confided at the end of the year to France Inter, that is to say in the central space and political overcoming.”
