New French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal Slammed as ‘Anti-Muslim, Anti-Worker’

Analyst Phil Kelly employed a scatalogical metaphor to describe the ambitious young politician.

The 34-year-old Gabriel Attal made history as France’s youngest Prime Minister when he was appointed to the position Tuesday, but Belfast-based political commentator Phil Kelly is unimpressed by the former Socialist Party politician.

“So you've heard of the phrase, I presume, of polishing a turd?” Kelly asked host John Kiriakou on Sputnik’s Political Misfits program. “I mean, within the Western political landscape, this is what we get… when something gets too stench-filled and the public know that they need a change, but they're not sure what the change should be.”

“This is an individual who was groomed by the establishment, willingly groomed by the establishment, an absolute wannabe who will do or say anything for personal advancement,” the activist added. “As I say, [he] left the Socialist Party to advance himself under Macron's patronage. A child of privilege, privately educated, and he managed to overcome the hurdles, which he talks about of being gay and of having a Jewish background.”

“But despite all these obstacles and challenges that the establishment pawn has faced, he's risen to be France's PM at the age of 34, so he can inflict misery on genuinely marginalized people.”

Kelly slammed Attal as “anti-worker” throughout his tenure in the finance ministry, noting he once “talked about France needing to move away from their strike culture.” France has a powerful trade union movement that has repeatedly taken to the streets as President Emmanuel Macron has sought to raise the country’s retirement age and weaken labor protections. 2003 saw multiple demonstrations in the country attracting more than one million protesters.

The political commentator also accused Attal of pandering towards “anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim” elements in French society.

“This is a country with a colonial past,” noted Kelly of the European nation that held territory in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. “And like many, you know, former empires in Europe, they've kind of got this hangover from their imperial past that they look back on, and still see themselves as superior.”

“They [Muslims] now serve the function of these kind of political lightweights, of being kind of the new version of the 1930s Jews within Europe,” he added, claiming the minority group is subjected to “scapegoating” in the continent’s politics. As Minister of Education Attal banned Muslim girls in French schools from wearing the abaya, a traditional dress often worn in the Arab world.

Support has collapsed for Attal’s former Socialist Party in France after former President François Hollande became the most unpopular leader in the history of the Fifth Republic. The party only garnered single-digit support in presidential elections in 2022 and 2017. The French left has largely thrown their support to politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the country’s presidential politics, while many more moderate Socialist Party members have migrated to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist movement.

But ultimately Kelly said it’s not Macron who’s calling the shots in modern French politics, but right-wing politician Marine Le Pen.

“The plan is that if Marine Le Pen steps in one direction, you follow her,” said Kelly. “If the far right moves in one direction, you follow them two steps behind. And as I say, the choice is really between you vote for the far right or you vote for people calling themselves sort of centrists, but saying ‘We'll kind of do what the far right will do. But look, we've got a young 34-year-old prime minister who's openly gay, that's progressive. Wouldn't you rather we brutalize immigrants on the streets being led by this man rather than this far right?”

“It's not a great choice,” he concluded. “It is, in fact, no choice at all.”