140. The Next President of France? Gabriel Attal on Macron, Le Pen, and Israel-Iran

31:19So after Macron's election in 2017, we were 30 under 30 elected in the parliament. And that's actually changed quite culturally, I think, politics. And today you see young people on important responsibilities in every party. So to answer your question, I never felt like patronized, Patronized or undermined. What about other leaders, other prime ministers and presidents that you had to deal with? Did you find that your youth was an advantage or a disadvantage? I think neither an advantage or a disadvantage, actually. You know, in France, foreign affairs are more handled by the president than the prime minister.

32:02It's what we call the domain réservé. But I met with some counterparts. I met with Justin Trudeau, with Olaf Scholz, with Mark Routte, who was at that time prime minister in the Netherlands, with Joe Biden, who I welcomed in Paris for the D-Day commemorations with President Xi Jinping. I never felt that my age was an issue in a sense or another. No one ever mentioned actually my age. And so I think it's quite positive. Tell us a little bit about Xi Jinping and Biden. What did you notice about them as personalities, their manner, their charisma, their way of talking? You know, Joe Biden, I welcomed him for the D-Day celebrations, the 80th anniversary in Normandy.

32:52And it was such a powerful moment. You had all these European and abroad leaders and allies brought together to commemorate this such important day in our history. And if I'm in London today on this 18th of June, it's because I came to commemorate the important speech of the General de Gaulle on the BBC here in London on June the 18th, 1940. It was a very strong moment. It was actually at the end of Joe Biden's term. Before, actually, he announced that he would not be running. I think a few days or a few weeks before, but it was at the end of his term. And what was the difference in personality between Biden and Xi Jinping as people to deal with them interpersonally?

33:40I welcomed them. I had shared a few moments with them. I had more moments with Justin Trudeau, Laf Schultz and Mark Routte. Yeah, it's different personalities, but two personalities that were, I think, embodying how powerful were their countries. How do you feel that? How do you feel the embodiment of power? It's very difficult to describe or to put words on it. It's something you feel when you shake hands with someone, when you have a discussion with someone. It's more magnetic than something you can completely understand or describe. I mentioned the snap election. So you're there for eight months and then suddenly Macron, President Macron calls the election.

34:24And I have to tell you, I mentioned in the introduction, Rory, who's sitting there with you in the studio now, thought it was the most spectacularly insane thing to do and said so very very very loudly there's quite a famous photograph of you looking rather sort of half skeptical and half angry so just tell us what did you think about that decision you know many things were said about this decision and about the fact that i wasn't aware of this decision and that the president told me his decisions a few minutes before telling the French citizens. And so I don't really like commenting again this issue.

35:09But of course, I was more saddened than angry. And actually not saddened for me as a prime minister, because I offered my resignation to the president immediately when we had the results of the European elections. And when he announced that he would call for snap elections, I offered him my resignation, telling him, instead of calling for snap elections, accept my resignation. We lost the European elections, so people will understand that I resigned and you appoint another prime minister. So it wasn't for me staying as a prime minister. It was more for the country. Because immediately when I knew that elections were coming, I knew what would happen.

35:50And that we would have this situation we have today and we face today in the French parliament. which is a parliament completely, I don't know, to... Un Français? Complètement destructuré, sans aucune majorité, completely... Yeah, unable to do anything. There's no majorities, you can't do anything, yeah. There's no majority, and even no relative majority, because, you know, in France, we have a system where we are used to have absolute majorities for presidents elected. a few times in the history we had what we call a relative majority which means your party by itself doesn't have an absolute majority but you can have a few mps from another party to help you or there's no majority to overrule your government so that happened a few times and that's what actually was the situation while i was prime minister but we never had the situation we we have today which is even no relative majority so i kind of foresaw what would be happening and that was i was saddened by that but i decided to to campaign i hesitated i have to say for 24 hours i thought of leaving office and leaving politics but i thought that you sort of leaving politics yeah of course many things crossed my mind because uh it was so um i don't know it was so so shocking so unexpected and the way the decision was uh built also without me being aware of it and i was the prime minister from the president's party it was completely understandable for me but it lasted 24 hours and then I thought if I'm not campaigning if I'm resigning how will my MPs from my party campaign how will them be able to convince voters that we have a chance on these elections so I decided to run again to campaign everyone I say everyone in every newspapers at the beginning of the campaign were writing and saying that Marine Le Pen, the far-right party Rassemblement National, would have an absolute majority.

38:14Everyone, every polls indicated that they would have an absolute majority. And we campaigned, me with my candidates, for three weeks. And in the end, even though we did not win this election, because I would be prime minister still. Even though we did not win these elections, the far right didn't win these elections and they actually have less MPs than we have. So this is an amazing moment of opportunity, I think. The US is retreating from the world. So you could imagine a Europe that really created entirely new structures, maybe thought about integrating in an outer circle, the UK, Norway, Turkey, single market membership for Serbia and the Western Balkans, reconceptualizing almost everything, right?

39:03Is that your vision? How ambitious would you be on these sort of things? As you said, I think we have this huge momentum. I think the EU is losing its naiveness on many issues, on our sovereignty, our independence, our industry, our ability to work closer together and to invest together on defense, on innovation, AI, etc. I think we can see the end of this naiveness with the decisions that are being taken by the European Commission on the deregulation issues in order to lower some regulations that were taken over the last years or decades, which don't allow our companies to invest or innovate as they should.

39:51I think we are seeing some important reforms on the EU level, such as the new pact for asylum and migrations. And the new commission has plans in order to do better. And we also have the planets aligned because it's our vision and our line in France with the president. and it's also the new German chancellor's idea, I think, to do more on the European level. But I also think that we must have this à la carte, as you say in French, the possibility on some issues or some topics to work not with all the members of the EU, but sometimes with countries which are not EU members. And what we are seeing today on defense, on the support to Ukraine with the coalition of volunteers that Emmanuel Macron with Prime Minister Starmer and others and Norway was in it.

40:55I think it's an interesting idea to go further on some issues. But I still think that the EU has a future. And actually, I think that if we want to be stronger, if we want to be able to compete with the US and with China on industry, on innovation, on AI, if we don't want to become the holiday resort or the retirement house for the world, an American or Chinese colony on innovation, we must act on a European level. And we need the EU for that. And maybe you need more than the EU. I mean, I'm wondering, you're talking à la carte, but I'm wondering whether you couldn't think about a much more exciting structural solution for the non-EU members of Europe.

41:45It's a time where we have to build bridges and strengthen our ties with countries that share our values. We saw and we see what's happening in the US. We see the very aggressive economy policy that China has. We see the huge threats on our security on the continent with Russia. So we need to move closer together, even with countries which are not EU members. And I think the renewed path we have with the UK today, the partnership that was signed in May, and I think more will be coming with the president's state visit in a few days now or weeks, I think it's a good sign. Even though I have to say it and I have to tell it, my dream is that my generation will be the one that sees the UK rejoining the EU.

42:36That would be, for me, a dream and I think it's possible. Moi aussi. Gabriel, let me ask you this about President Macron. First of all, how would you describe your relationship with him? Have you forgiven him for what he did in calling the snap election? Secondly, do you think Macronism dies when he is no longer president, or is there a deeper political philosophy? And I'd also like to just ask you straight out whether you expect and hope to be a candidate in the presidential elections. Well, first, my relation, I'm loyal to Emmanuel Macron. It's thanks to him that I was able to commit in politics nationally.

43:21Without him, I wouldn't have become an MP. I wouldn't have joined the government and I wouldn't have been prime minister. So I'm completely aware of that. And I also see that we made in France, thanks to him, very important things. Economically, we finally had a policy regarding taxations and competitiveness for our companies. We never saw in France before. We had some transformations on the labor market, the retirement pension system. That was very important. So I'm loyal, but I'm free as well. I'm not prime minister anymore. I'm now the leader of my party. And so now I'm also preparing for the future.

44:06The second question you had was about what we call macronism. I think that what was opened in the French political system with Macron's election is first a method, the idea of having people coming from the left, from the right, from the center, from everywhere, working together on common issues and with common values. It's quite new in French politics. And I think it will last. I think that's what a majority of French people are waiting for. And I think what we had before, which was this system with the left-wing party and the right-wing party competing, even though on some issues they were agreeing but they couldn't say it and when the right-wing party comes in power it has to cancel what the left-wing party did when they were in power because it was the left-wing left-wing party who did it etc etc i don't think people are waiting in france for this to come back so first a method and i think it will stay i will try and i will advocate for this method to be continued in in French politics and at the higher level if it's possible.

45:19And second, it's the ideas. You don't have today in the French politics another party which is pro-European, liberal, firm on security, immigration, justice, and concerned by the environment and ecology. You don't have other parties with these ideas. And I think that you can convince a majority of French people with these main values and goals. Why has Macron become so unpopular? He strikes me as a very exceptional thinker and actor and political operative. And yet he does seem to be very, I'm in France at the moment, as you know, and it's very hard to get people to speak up for him. And is that not a real danger for you if you are the candidate in the next election?

46:12Because although you're saying that you're different, In a sense, you're saying sort of the same things. We've got to hold the center together. Well, I think we have different personalities. We are not clones. And I think on some issues, well, I might be more concerned or maybe more radical on some issues than he used to be when he was campaigning in 2017 and after, especially on the security and justice issues. issues. I've been pushing for being stronger on these issues with kind of radical proposals. Maybe on other issues also, I will show that we are different. And I think it's saying that we are not all the same in politics.

46:55Then on popularity, he's been in office since eight years, which is very, very long. He's the first president to be reelected while having a majority. You had French presidents re-elected before, but they were re-elected after not having the power in the government and in the parliament because there was the cohabitation. So it's very long. And we had some crisis. We had the COVID. We had the gilet jaune crisis, which happened just after he was elected president, but was actually the fault of years and years of wrong decisions on some issues. So that would be my explanation. And you know, in France, I think in the opinion, in the end, when people are mad on some decisions, they blame the president because it's the only one they all elect directly.

47:55The prime minister is not elected directly by the French citizen. Okay, my final question then is this. Let's say that you do become the candidate. And let's say that Marine Le Pen is finished because of the legal case and Jordan Bardella, another young guy, becomes the candidate for the far right. What's your best thought about how you tackle this populism that seems to be so powerful across European politics right now? How do you go head to head against Bardella and win? I think what we need is to be able to create a new hope for French citizens. I think the main failure of my party and of us over the last years is that we became a party that was more against the extremes and the populist than a party for a project and a vision that was able to gather people together around a project.

48:57So my main goal and my main work and activity right now is to completely rebuild our party, beginning by the ideas. We've been working very hard with elected officials, with experts, with French citizens on our program. We just released three weeks ago our program on security immigration. We'll be releasing in two weeks our program on the economy and the support workers. and I think it's with new ideas and ideas on topics that people are waiting for us to act that we'll be able to convince them. And you know the difficulty we have in France and I think it's different than what we're seeing in other European countries where we see far-right populist movements rising is that the Rassemblement National in France has been rising by completely changing their speech.

49:55The program is still the same. But for instance, in 2017, the Rassemblement National, Front National at that time, was advocating for the Brexit. I think they understand and they feel that a majority of French people are pro-European, especially with what we are seeing in the world today. And so they completely changed their speech. Now they're saying, we don't want to leave the EU. But when you look at their program, there's not a single proposal that can be placed or that can be implemented within the EU. So it's actually more difficult than it was before to attack populism when they have a completely different speech, which is not what you can find in their program.

50:40But I think before looking at them and talking about them, we have to talk about ourselves. We have to be quite blunt about what we failed. And we failed some things, especially on security issues, migration issues. And we have to talk about the positive program we want for the country. I think what French citizens or French people want is kind of basic. They want to be able to know that next year they will earn more thanks to their work. because they will progress in their work. And they want their children to have a better life than they have. Actually, it's a quite simple expectation. And behind that, you have education.

51:23So I would push for way more reforms and investments in our education system. And you have labor or working issues, how you get more money from your work and especially more money from working than from non-working. How do we answer to this question, which is very important, especially in the young generations, which is the conciliation between personal life and working life? Work-life balance, yeah. Exactly. I think these are issues that are not really the issues that political parties focus on today but they are issues which are so important in the minds of our citizens so I'll try to convince them that we have the responses.

52:17Well thank you you've given us a lot of time, been very patient you're on your way to see Tony Blair so we're very grateful that you gave us the time. Thank you for the invitation and I hope my English was okay I'm not used to speak in English Your English was fantastic, we don't want to say your English is better than Alistair's French but I suspect it may even be we never get to test it properly. J 'aurais pu le faire en français sans problème. Je vous inviterais à Paris pour faire un podcast avec moi en français. Ah super. Gabriel, thank you. Thank you so much. It's great to see you. Merci.

52:47Au revoir. Take care.

52:51So Alistair, Gabriel Attal, amazing. I mean we talk about him a lot. Very young, very glamorous. We didn't mention one of the things he was most famous for internationally, of course, which is that he appointed his former husband as his foreign minister when he became Prime Minister. I don't think, as he said, Rory, foreign policy is the domain of the president. So the president appointed his former husband as the foreign minister and the Prime Minister's cabinet. Does the president appoint the entire cabinet? No, I think the Prime Minister presents the government, but I don't think the Prime Minister would put into the foreign minister's position somebody that wasn't going to get on with the president.

53:28Got you, got you. But you were getting a bit sparky, though. Yeah, I was getting a bit sparky because under the surface, I'm a bit worried that this is somebody who came from the left. And he keeps talking about security and immigration, security and immigration. And that's the first paper he's published. And I think you're on the money when you say that a lot of this is about trying to outflank the populist right. I'm particularly sad about this question about the rules-based international order. I think we're at a time when the biggest opportunity for Europe is to become the champion for international values.

54:08I think it's profoundly disappointing that for him, security basically means might is right. We saw very, very little sign of… Listen, you've got to understand just a few things in his defence. The first thing is that he was Prime Minister. He said himself that he's broadly loyal to Macron, but he said quite a lot of critical things on the domestic agenda. Foreign policy is not his domain. And if he'd have said to us, yeah, you're absolutely right, France and Germany and Britain, they should have been calling this out. That would have been big news in France in a way that would have been... But he had an opportunity maybe later, without talking explicitly about what's been happening in the Middle East, to talk about rules-based international order, international values, when he was describing that vision at the end for Europe.

54:54Yeah, possibly. Yeah, he could have done that. I'm not getting much of a sense of values. And I'm a little troubled by some of this anti-immigration stuff. I mean, there was also something, well, I think two things troubled me. Firstly, I think there's a bit of, obviously, hypocrisy that I was needling at a bit there, which is that he's all for pushing people back to Algeria, but he's not going to say that people who land in Britain from France can come back to France. That's not something he's signing up for. And the second thing is that I'm a bit worried that actually this is a dangerous path because, in fact, some of these policies in the two main things he's talking about, security immigration on the one hand and economics on the other, I wasn't sure what the content really was there.

55:33I mean, when I said, you know, what are you actually going to do to deal with this? He said, well, you know, we tried this with Algeria and it didn't quite work. I'm going to try that. It didn't really feel to me as though this is somebody with a very clear plan on how they're going to get that done. More like he's going to talk it up. And then Jordan Bardella, the far right, will go into that election saying, if you're serious about dealing with immigration, are you going to vote for this guy or are you going to vote for us? Just to push back a little bit on that. So you've said many, many, many times on the podcast that any European party right now that is not very, very clear about the strong borders, protecting our country, being firm on immigration, whilst at the same time, as he did, welcoming people that the economy needs, that they're in real trouble.

56:23and I think there is a part of him that is sitting there in quite a difficult it's a very strange position that he's in because as he was saying he's essentially leader of the party but not part of the government and he's clearly a presidential you know he's thinking of himself in terms of a possible presidential candidature so it's quite a difficult balancing act I think there not to be constantly you know the French papers today for example I refer to them briefly there were you You know, there were quite a few stories about Beirut having a pop at him over this veil thing. Macron wishing he hadn't done something, whatever.

56:57So, you know, he's, I think, in quite a difficult position. The other thing I would say in his defence is that although he's English, as you said, is very, very good, I think it is sometimes harder. So, for example, there were a few phrases which I saw you sort of balking out a little bit, but I think actually that was slightly lost in translation. But, no, I know what you mean. I think he's somebody who's worked out, who is working out, having had this incredible rise through politics, prime minister so young, ex-prime minister so young, very popular in the polls in France, clearly could be a candidate.

57:32And he's working out the sort of pillars of his own strategy. One of them is going to be security. One of them is going to be hope. One of them is going to be, you know, a more modern economic policy. And where I think he's right, Roy, is when he said at the end, I was trying to push him on this, how would you tackle Bardella? And I think he's right that before getting into that, work out what, why, as he didn't want to really answer the question about why Macron has become so popular. He just said it's because he's been there a long time. There's something deeper going on, which he and his party have to work out pretty quickly.

58:05Yeah, well, I think they really do, because there's so much of him, which I think listeners will pick up as being a sort of mini Macron. It's not that easy to see what the difference is. I mean, they're both very smart young people who seem to be from relatively elite tone and culture and the way they conduct themselves. And it's not that easy to see what the difference is. So if Macron's catastrophically unpopular, can you really present someone like that as a change candidate at the end of eight years as a presidency? And that leads me on my other thing. If I was going to, and we can, I think, disagree about this too.

58:42If he runs and is defeated, my guess is the reason he'll be defeated is that there aren't really any ideas there. And people won't really sense that anything's really happening. I mean, what are the ideas? He's a bit tougher on immigration. He's a bit more restrictive on the veil than Macron. On economics, I mean, there isn't a liberal economic vision there, really. And when you push him, basically he's saying, yeah, he's a sort of Reagan thatcherite, but he wants to do it in a more consultative way, including the unions and the conversation. That doesn't really sound like somebody who's going to make voters think, this guy is really going to sort out the French economy, has a kind of radical vision.

59:25So that's what will worry me. He'll go into the election. He'll be charming. He'll be nice. He's a very nice guy. I mean, I love the lovely smile. He's very, you know, he doesn't get flustered. But in this age, taking on populism, has he really got the ideas, the edge, the energy to... I think you're being quite harsh because you're underestimating the difficulty of the political position he uniquely is in right now. Combining this sense of loyalty to the guy who, as he said, gave him his career, the party that he's still a leading figure in, and this sort of very complicated landscape of who will eventually emerge on the ballot for the presidential candidature, because it might not be him, by the way.

1:00:10There's all sorts of others who will be in the same space and trying to be the not Macron, but centrist candidate. And I think what you're seeing, I could be wrong, but my sense and knowing him a bit and his people a bit, I think what he's trying to do is, the election's not until 2027. He's got two years to put together a programme that, as you say, has to be radical, has to be innovative, has to be different to Macron without being too distancing of some of those principles that he talked about at the end. And we'll see. Two years is quite a long time. It is interesting that despite having lost that election, despite the closeness to Macron, perceived closeness to Macron, he is still very, very, he's doing well in the polls in a way that Macron is not.

1:01:01So, you know, maybe the French have a slightly different view. I may be over-influenced by this. Tell me again why the analogy with Kamala Harris doesn't quite work because I'm slightly worried it feels a bit Kamala Harris, which is that he's coming in as somebody who's been, as it were, the vice president or the second most senior person in government. He's reluctant to criticize his former boss in a way that Kamala Harris was reluctant to criticize Biden. His message is basically in the end, what people care about is cost of living and their lives being better this year than next year. We got a lot of that from the Democrats in the election.

1:01:41And what Trump kind of proved is that certainly in America, you're not really in that kind of politics anymore. It's not enough to have a kind of nice technocratic explanation of how you're going to be able to improve living standards if everybody does the right thing. And if we get a little bit of work-life balance here, I mean, it sounded quite kind of Cameroon. So you've called him Thatcher, Reagan, Cameroon. I think he is a lot closer to the whole sort of third-way Blairism. But again, you might say... But again, whether it's third-way Blairism, it's a long time ago, right? That's a different age.

1:02:17That's also harder to distance yourself from Macron. But the other thing that maybe he's thinking because i mean i do find it genuinely interesting as a political historical phenomenon that macron who emerged in the way that he did with this kind of incredible excitement and this sort of real sense of big vision and so forth and as gabrielle said one another one in the second election but now seems to be so unpopular so i think maybe the difference that he's trying to put into place he's talked about being different personalities actually that But it is going to be for him less of the vision thing, more of the, you know, here are the pillars of my program.

1:02:58Here is how I'm going to do it. Now, you could argue that was technocratic, but a lot of that depends on how you then project that. So he's running really as Keir Starmer. No, I don't think he's running as Keir Starmer. He's running. That is your definition of Keir Starmer. Anyway, I'm a bit troubled that you sort of have taken so against him because I think he's got a lot more to him than you give him credit for. I think I came in with too high expectations. I mean, he's got this incredible reputation as being the greatest political communicator in France. People refer to him as the word sniper, master of political communication.

1:03:31So I really thought I'm going to be meeting one of the most sort of charismatic, extraordinary political communicators. What I felt was, yeah, he was a bright, nice, quite charming, technocratic guy. But there's not great sense of humor when I give him a massive softball on world leaders, something to say about Biden, something to say about Xi Jinping. Or maybe, you know, I can't tell you something about Biden, but here's a joke about Olaf Scholz. Something to sort of bring these people alive. can I just say as a fellow interviewer on these podcasts it's always a mistake to go into interviews with what you want them to say well the question is does is what he says of any interest what I took from that was actually if I'm too sort of you know oh my friend Joe my friend Xi Jinping on this I'm going to look kind of slightly arrogant and playing above my station, as it were.

1:04:32So I thought I saw a bit of modesty in that. You don't think a more confident politician would have been able to provide one funny or cute anecdote about one world leader? Possibly, but maybe easier in your mother tongue. You think of it as an interview in France. I mean, do you agree that he is a master of public political communication, a word sniper? I think within the French system, he does very, very well in his communication. And are they looking for something a bit different from what an Anglo-American communication style is? Is it a cultural thing? I thought when Macron came along that what they were looking for was a sort of anglospheric type of, and I think they are looking for something different.

1:05:10In the end, although he gave us a lot of time, we sort of ran out of time in a way. Because the other thing I wanted to talk about was actually whether, because of the nature of French people, whether France is almost ungovernable because the French are so difficult. we need to check on the bookmakers because i i don't know where he's standing in the sort of rankings at the moment you've got all these other names you've got eduard philippe i mean people still talk about but about barnier you've got gluckman um you've got different people in this operating in this sphere and he's i think he's reasonably well placed but not home and dry so maybe he's being a bit cautious i guess so where i'm with you it would have been i felt towards the end, I felt the beginnings of the big program coming together, and then not quite there.

1:05:57That's where I might go with you. But I still think you're being very, very harsh. I think you're jealous because he became prime minister at his 30s. I think you just think... That's true. It's pure, pure envy. I actually am the middle-aged patronizing politician feeling threatened by this young genius. You are. No, that's right. That's what was happening. You're completely right. In fact, there was he saying, I've never experienced anyone, you know, being thrown off by my youth. And he was sitting right next to some chippy, bitter, insecure, middle-aged politician having a go at him. Yeah, well, I'll text him in a minute for his, what do you think of Rory then?

1:06:30I'll let you know. Very good. All right. Lots of love. Thank you again. Bye-bye.