Is a Frenchman the same age as Taylor Swift too young to lead a country?

France’s new PM Gabriel Attal is 34 – and has been verbally guillotined for the lack of life experience he brings to the role. But, argues historian Guy Walters, when it comes to having the chops to meet the rigours of modern-day leadership, youthful vigour usually wins the day

JFK was inaugurated at 43, while New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern was in her thirties (Getty)

Can you remember what you were doing in the middle of March 1989? I can, because it was the beginning of my final school holidays, which meant a forthcoming month of A-level revision and all that tedious graft and anxiety. One person who I guarantee won’t remember back then is the new French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, for the simple reason that he had only just been born.

For us codgers aged in our early fifties, we have long gotten used to the reality that we are often far older than the people who become world leaders. Rishi Sunak became prime minister when he was just 42, which was only a year younger than the age at which Tony Blair and David Cameron were given the keys to No 10. But, for Pete’s sake, Attal is just 34, which means that he was born in the same year as Gareth Bale, Taylor Swift, and Daniel Radcliffe. There are even YouTube stars, such as PewDiePie, who were born in 1989.

While it seems perfectly reasonable for those from the sporting and entertainment worlds to have reached the tops of their games so young, there is something unsettling that a man whose voice only broke around the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq should now be the prime minister of a G7 nation.