No problem Attal

Failed sobriety and Macron's rebrand

Dear Friend, 

I hope you are doing well and keeping warm, physically and spiritually. 

In my last letter, I wrote about how Paris doesn’t do deep winter very well. It goes against the generally pleasure- and café-terrace-loving grain of life here. Quite frankly, it’s a heavy time of year and strategies must be made to counteract its could-be melancholy. I previously wrote about my adoption of Protestant January — a sober approach to life favouring work, routine and responsibility. Though my month has mainly been characterised by appropriate activities such as the cooking of sensible vegetables and protracted periods of tidying the apartment, I am afraid to say that this week I strayed quite majorly from the Protty path…I had a delightful and decadent time on a group press trip with other British journalists in the Alps. Not only did I laugh full-heartedly every day (for shame!), I also ate delicious food and wine, even fondue! (what food could be less Protestant than gooey, messy, delicious fondue?), used a sauna(!) and OUTDOOR HOT TUB, and embarrassed myself trying to learn to ski. 

L'Alpaga Hotel, Megève

Even worse, the pleasure-seeking is not over. I also have more plans to leave Paris this weekend for a WINE FESTIVAL in Burgundy, called Le Saint-Vincent Tournante. I first heard about this event from my neighbour, Dr. Diane, my source for all facts deeply French, and often a bit offbeat. (Previous facts imparted to me by Diane: French people used to use the cistern of their old-fashioned toilets to wash their fish; the Hospital Saint-Louis in the east of Paris houses a secret museum of – often gruesome — medical moulds; there are three types of chestnut — chataigne, marron and marrons d’inde — and they are strictly NOT the same thing…and the lessons go on). Well, Diane told me that this festival is a great way to experience Burgundy’s rich culture of the vine. It rotates location to a different Burgundy village every year, and this year will be hosted in neighbouring villages Chambolle-Musigny and Morey-Saint-Denis. 

I wrote about Burgundy and some other lovely places in France in this article for Telegraph Travel: Five overlooked corners of France to visit in 2024

I will try to atone for above jollity by being appropriately austere in every other waking hour.

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No problem Attal: Macron’s 2024 rebrand

Growing up, I was the youngest in my family and the youngest in the school year, meaning I developed an attachment to thinking of myself as young. No spoilers, but this penchant for feeling youthful has become harder to reconcile with the facts as the years of my life have gone on.

As an over-thirty, I am forced to admit that I am no longer very young per se. I would be an old pop star, for example. I’m too old to be a prodigy, I will never be a startlingly successful twenty-something author…I’m possibly even too old wear a scrunchie in my hair, though I haven’t let this stop me.

But to soothe myself, I have developed a sliding scale of things and situations I am still ‘young for’. I would still be a young…CEO! I would still be pretty young to wear a sensible fleece unironically. I would still be really young to die! AND, I tell myself, I would still be young to lead a country.

I am comforted, then, that France’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, 34 — someone actually A BIT OLDER - than me, is being lauded as a representative of YOUTH.

In early January, Macron announced the replacement of the very experienced Élisabeth Borne, France’s second ever female prime minister, with Attal, France’s youngest ever PM and also the first ever openly gay person to hold this position. Gabriel Nissim Attal de Couriss, as is his full name, is the son of a Tunisian and French Jewish lawyer and film producer and a French mother with roots in Odessa, who raised him in the Christian Orthodox faith. His trajectory is textbook for members of the French political class: educated at the prestigious École Alsacienne on the Left Bank, later followed by the obligatory Master’s degree at Sciences Po, located close by.

Man sporting youthful fashions

He came up through the centre-left Parti Socialiste and has in recent years been picked up as a kind of protégé for Macron. First he was a spokesperson for the Govenrment, then education minister, before landing this top job. Apparently he is quite popular and his promotion is seen as a proactive move to boost the likability and YOUTH APPEAL of Macron’s government. This comes in the context of Macron’s waning popularity and an ever more threatening far Right, embodied by the omnipresent Marine Le Pen and rising star Jordan Bardella, born in 1995, who is now the president of the National Rally party (the artist formerly known as the ‘National Front’.) 

Attal’s predecessor, Elisabeth Borne, seems to me to have been victim of the phenomenon known as the ‘glass cliff-face’, when a woman is given a leadership role at a uniquely difficult time, only to be chucked out later (think Theresa May during Brexit negotiations). She became the face of the hard push to pass the new legislation on the retirement age last year, and more recently has spearheaded a controversial new Immigration Bill, which is being studied by a constitutional council this week (a bit more on that below).

Meanwhile, the culture minister position has been taken over by a former star of the centre-right Sarkozy government, Rachida Dati. I remember learning about Dati way back when I was studying A-Level French. She was born to working-class immigrants (her mother was from Algeria and her father Morocco) and rose to prominence as one of several highly accomplished and incidentally highly glamorous women in Sarkozy’s cabinet, where she served as minister of justice (she started out as a spokesperson for Sarkozy, a bit like Attal for Macron).

She has a complicated relationships to her own roots, referring to herself as a ‘daughter of France’ above all. In recent years, after becoming mayor of the posh 7th arrondissement, she has set herself up as the thorn in the side of the Paris Mayor, Socialist Anne Hidalgo.

Her new appointment in this high-profile and powerful role (the culture department in France wields a budget of €4.2 billion in 2023) has been met with surprise, in part due to claims of corruption against her name, as well as a high-profile court case around the paternity of her daughter, who she has raised on her own.

Last Tuesday, Macron held a 2-hour+ press conference to launch his new Government and new vision for the year ahead. It’s the type of opportunity to be strong and wordy that the articulate president relishes.

Sketches and notes while watching Macron press conference

The big pull quote was his engagement to encourage young French people to have children, employing the strangely militaristic term, “réarmement démographique” (demographic rearmament), which immediately for me evoked the image of canon being loaded with little babies in swaddling cloths. Macron, who is often accused of being grandiose in his manner, quite often employs this militaristic language; for example, in his big speech at the start of the pandemic, he repeatedly declared “nous sommes en guerre” (‘we are at war’) against the virus.

It was definitely an odd look to see a powerful man who himself does not have children — though he does have step-children the same age as him and older — as engaging in. a ”fight against infertility”. According to experts, birth rates were down in France last year, but women of child-bearing age are still having an average of two children each; commentators have suggested that the dip last year may be more due to inflation and cost of living factors, the pandemic and just more general anxiety about global instability, than an attack of infertility.

During his conference, where he described the question of fertility and having babies as the ‘taboo of the century’, Macron mooted a more flexible parental leave set-up for men and women, while reports since have suggested that the Government is considering encouraging people to take a fertility test at 25, which will be entirely paid for by state health insurance.

“Pour que la France reste la France” (‘So that France remains France’)

Tautological patriotism from President Macron’s press conference this week

In many regards, France seems to be quite progressive when it comes to family policy. There is a big emphasis on the health and wellbeing of the new mother, and childcare is broadly more accessible and affordable than in the UK, for example. Various forms of IVF treatment, for heterosexual couples, same-sex couples and single women, are also reimbursed by state social security.

However, the president’s words also seem to echo some distinctly more reactionary currents, not least the framing of a woman’s choice to procreate as a kind of national duty. There is also a dog-whistle to the sinister ‘Great Replacement’ theory, espoused by the likes of far-right provocateur Eric Zemmour, which talks about the need to be vigilant against the ‘replacement’ of white Europeans by non-white people, often from Africa. (Do you want to tell Zemmour, or should I, that his parents were Algerian Jews?).

Still in place after Macron’s big reshuffle is the Interior Minister, conservative Gérald Darmanin. In role since 2020, he is seen by many as hard-line on immigration and policing. He has been at the centre of high-profile scandals and controversies, including comments that supermarkets should not have dedicated Halal and Kosher aisles, past opposition to gay marriage, and also legal action from women who have accused him of sexual abuse and even rape. His persona and political positions present a contrast with the socially liberal light in which many, especially outside the country, view Macron.

This week, the controversial Loi de l’Immigration, Immigration Bill will be studied by France’s Constitutional Council, after being ushered through parliament by Darmanin and then-prime minister Borne before Christmas. Originally framed as a mixed piece of legislation that tightened some rules for immigrants and softened others (e.g. granting papers to undocumented workers in sectors needing staff), the bill ended up passing in a tougher state thanks to amendments from the right-leaning Senate, so much so that Le Pen lauded its passing as an ‘ideological victory’.

In a process reminiscent of the ongoing court battles around the UK Government’s ‘Rwanda policy’, the legislation is now being volleyed over to the legal experts to see just how much of it is actually acceptable with regards to human rights and other things like that. Proposed measures include hardening the conditions under which legal immigrants can be reunited with their families, cutting access to state aid for immigrants, and making foreign students pay a deposit in order to have the right to study in France.

Questioned on strategy, Macron might argue that he is protecting the population against the Far Right by responding to some of the anxieties that the likes of Le Pen and Zemmour tap into. Others might argue he is legitimising these same topics.

One thing is certain, In the context of upcoming European elections this year, in which the National Rally set to place strongly, and adding to this the Olympic Games this summer, it promises to be a busy year for young Attal.

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Thirty-second book club

I just finished a non-fiction study called Paris Isn’t Dead Yet by Cole Stangler. The book is subtitled ‘Surviving Gentrification in the City of Light’. It looks a ‘the past, present and future of the city’ through the lens of class conflict and Gentrification, and what that means with the geographical specificities of Paris. It takes a deep-dive into the fast-gentrifying east of the city, as well as the history of revolutions, uprisings, barricades and 19th-century gentrification à la Haussmann. It’s an interesting read that presents a counterpoint to the often sanitised representations of Paris we see on social media and on TV.

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Thank you very much for reading this week’s Pen Friend. It is always so encouraging to see new people sign up, so if you consistently open and enjoy these letters, please do ‘like’, share it and recommend. It’s much appreciated!

Have a lovely week!

Yours,

Hannah