Generation Y take over the world with new French PM Gabriel Attal, but is the millennial up to it?
You could almost feel it. Thousands of millennials around the planet were getting the exact same lecture this week from their parents: “You’ve got no money, no house and you’re still single. This fella who’s now running all of France, he’s about the same age as you!” they shriek.
Gabriel Attal – the whip-smart, photogenic, gay, 34-year-old new Prime Minister of the world’s fifth biggest economy – really is making the rest of Generation Y look bad in comparison.
Life’s not going to be easy for the over-achieving young leader appointed head of government on Wednesday (AEDT) by his country’s unpopular President, Emmanuel Macron. Attal’s centrist party of government is deeply divided, he hasn’t got a majority in the French parliament, far-right Marine Le Pen is in the ascendancy.
And in the weird French model of government where the prime minister is responsible for running the government day-to-day but the ultimate power resides with the president, he is still second fiddle to Macron. But what millennial hasn’t been brought in to clean up the mess of a Generation Xer at some point, eh?
Still, it’s pretty weird and wonderful to see someone whose teen years would have been spent listening to Beyonce, Rihanna and Linkin Park now running a national government.
This writer rarely feels under-accomplished. One is a chief of staff at a great newspaper such as The Weekend Australian at the tender age of 30, after all.
But anyone who has seen the state of my pokey little flat or how much time I spend on Instagram sure as hell isn’t putting me in charge of a country anytime soon.
The prime ministership of France usually may not be on one’s radar, but what an odd sensation it is to realise that people like you, people who listened to the same music and grew up with the same TV shows and hold the same prejudices, are suddenly in power.
Attal is officially the youngest world leader as of today. If he’d been American, he would be too young to run for the White House. Under the US constitution you have to wait until you’re 35 to be president. A threshold the decrepit Joe Biden is surely glad of, as it stops that young leftie firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenging him for the Democratic nomination.
Attal and young ’uns like him now have quite the burden on their shoulders. Not only the usual weight of government but the pressure to prove millennials really can run the show.
The track record so far for my generation’s few national leaders has not been great.
The 36-year-old President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, was elected last year on a platform of change and hope. This week, the country’s most notorious gang leader has vanished from prison under Noboa’s nose. And organised crime is so out of control in Ecuador that a group of masked crims broke into a TV station and took everyone hostage live on air.
In Chile, then 35-year-old socialist Gabriel Boric rose to power in 2022 under a promise to sweep away the last vestiges of Augusto Pinochet’s rule and change the constitution, all while telling everyone what a big fan of Taylor Swift he was. Fast forward two years and Boric is a complete lame duck and Pinochet’s constitution is still intact.
In 2017, baby-faced 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz was elected chancellor of Austria and appeared to be the future of European conservatism. By 35 he was all washed up. Ousted in a corruption scandal, he ran off to work for tech baron Peter Thiel.
Then there is the poster girl of millennial leadership, Finland Social Democrat Sanna Marin. She was a momentary hero to a generation who grew up on the internet and documented their every movement when she was seen partying on her weekend while running the country from 9 to 5. She was unceremoniously dumped in last year’s Finnish election and ended up coming third. At least she has more time to party.
So that’s the millennial prime ministers and presidents: image-obsessed, incompetent and a bit cowardly. Not a great look for the generation of Attal and me so far. And not far from the stereotypes.
But maybe the millennials on the right side of 35 can do things a bit differently and show off our good qualities in government from now on – our resourcefulness, our mastery of technology, our broad-mindedness.
Or maybe all generations go through this and realise the world really isn’t much better when Mum and Dad are no longer in charge.
It was only a few years ago that Gen X would have felt the same for the first time. Canada’s Justin Trudeau, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, our own Scott Morrison and indeed Macron – all in their late 40s and early 50s now – running the world and dominating daily life during the pandemic.
They were the future once. And they all share very Generation X mannerisms and attitudes to the world. A swagger, an awkwardness and a cynicism that people who grew up in the 1980s and early ’90s often seem to share.
And where are they now? Trudeau and Macron are looking burnt out, Ardern cut her losses and ran before she was booted out, and, well, you know what happened to Morrison.
So here’s to you, Gabriel Attal. Maybe you’ll prove the millennials can lead Europe and the world into a brighter world.
Or maybe you’ll prove politicians, no matter what generation they’re from, are all the same.
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