The new French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has sent a strong message on law and order on his first full day in office, visiting a police station and promising to deliver security to “responsible working French people”, who he said wanted calm.
“There is no security without our police,” said Attal on Wednesday outside a police station in Ermont in the Val-d’Oise, setting the tone for his attempts to counter the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right.
Attal said: “French people expect us to continue our total effort for their security … All across France people aspire to order and tranquility.” Families had a role to play in establishing authority in society, he said. “I don’t see a society without order and rules. So it’s also the responsibility of families, and clearly the responsibility of schools as well. It’s the responsibility of society as a whole.”
Attal, 34, a savvy political communicator and former education minister, was appointed as France’s youngest ever prime minister this week by the centrist president Emmanuel Macron who is seeking to reinvigorate his second term and limit possible gains by Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party in June’s European elections.
Attal is expected to appoint a new government by the end of the week, with the hardliner, Gérald Darmanin, who accompanied his police station visit, expected to remain interior minister.
Attal’s first 24 hours in office appeared to indicate how the new prime minister is going to try to appeal to voters who have turned to the far right or abstained from elections. He sought to show not just authority, but also a willingness to listen more closely – and with greater empathy – to low and middle-income workers struggling to make ends meet or deal with the difficulties of housing or education.
Borrowing an idea from Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful 2007 presidential campaign, Attal appealed on Tuesday to workers who see their daily lives as a struggle, addressing the hard-working, but often low-paid French people who “wake up early”. His appointment was seen as a way to regain momentum for Macron, but also to reach beyond the president’s core voters, who tend to be higher-income and retirees.
Attal is also being presented in the media as a more human, approachable face of centrist politics. He is France’s first openly gay prime minister and has spoken about his own experience of bullying.
In 2021, when France adopted a law allowing single women and lesbians access to medically assisted reproduction, Attal posted on Instagram photos of himself as a baby, saying he was born via such a practice and said it “can now benefit millions of other families who until now have been unfairly deprived of it”.
In comments made during a trip to see people hit by flood damage in northern France on Tuesday night, Attal was keen to be seen as empathic; Macron himself has been accused at various points in his presidency of being arrogant or cut off.
Attal promised villagers: “No one will forget you.” He told one cafe owner whose premises had been flooded not to give up; that she represented the France that gets up early and that he’d come back to drink a coffee with her.
In the village of Clairmarais he said he wanted to show the whole country’s “solidarity” with those experiencing flood damage.
Attal began politics on the centrist wing of the Socialist party, before joining Macron’s centrist project. But as education minister he presented policies that appealed to the right, and which the National Rally said were borrowed from their own far-right manifesto. These included trials of uniform in schools and also banning schoolgirls from wearing abayas.
As budget minister, he was also quick to address the far right’s arguments that high taxes were not being properly spent on public services. He led a drive to explain to voters how their money was being spent.
Widespread public discontent over surging living costs and last year’s contested pension reform have seriously hit Macron’s approval ratings, and has affected polling for the European parliament election, where Macron’s centrist party is trailing behind Le Pen’s.
Attal has polled as one of France’s most popular politicians in recent months.
Brigitte Macron, the president’s wife, said on a TV programme on Tuesday that Attal was “a man of action”.
