Gabriel Attal joined the Socialist Party when he was 17. (File)
Paris:
Emmanuel Macron appointed 34-year-old Education Minister Gabriel Attal as his new Prime Minister on Tuesday. At 34, Gabriel Attal is France’s youngest post-war Prime Minister, a record previously held by the leftist Laurent Fabius, who was 37 when he was named Prime Minister by Francois Mitterrand in 1984.
Attal is France’s first openly gay Prime Minister. He was outed by an old school associate in 2018 when he was named a junior minister during Macron’s first mandate. At the time, Attal was in a relationship with Stephane Sejourne, Macron’s former political adviser.
Attal joined the Socialist Party when he was 17. He became a household name in French politics after being named government spokesman during the pandemic.
He would later be named as a junior minister in the finance ministry and then education minister in 2023, making a name for himself as one of Macron’s savviest cabinet ministers and a smooth communicator.
Attal’s first move following his appointment as education minister last year was to ban the Muslim abaya dress in state schools, earning him a popularity boost among many conservative voters despite his hailing from the left.
Attal recently went on a famous TV show to tell the story of how he was bullied in middle school by a former classmate, who he said shamed him on a blog created to rate classmates’ physiques during the early days of the Internet revolution.
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