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.

Despite the recent British prime ministerial examples, most of us, I suspect, have a predisposition that our leaders should ideally be quite old, and all kind of look like Harold Macmillan, who got the top job when he was 62, and had only climbed to the first lowly rung of power at the age of 46 when he was appointed to the dizzying heights of parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Supply. On the other hand, we do not want them to be too old, such as the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who both seem to be well into their tenth decades.

But despite such harumphing, is relative youth really an impediment to carrying out the tasks required by high office? May it even be an advantage? And is there really such a thing as an old head on young shoulders, or are the likes of Attal and his fellow inbetweener leaders simply men and women who have just managed to schmooze and network their way into the top job?

Although we tend to think of young leaders being a relatively new phenomenon, history shows us that it is anything but. After all, Alexander the Great had conquered the known world by the time he was thirty, and Attila the Hun came to power when he was six years younger than Attal the Frenchman.

Attal has been in government since 2018 (AFP via Getty)

A flick through the ages at which US presidents took office shows that of the nine men who entered the White House in their forties, five of them did so in the 19th century. Of the remaining four, Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated way back in 1901 when he was just 42, which makes him the youngest president, a year younger than John F Kennedy, and four and five years younger than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Similarly, in Britain we suppose the youthful likes of Blair and Sunak to be somewhat exceptional, and we regard Pitt the Younger coming to power at the age of 24 as being an aberration. However, this is to ignore the fact that four prime ministers in the 18th century came to office in their thirties, and 18 prime ministers in total have entered Downing Street in their forties.

Of course, when life expectancy was shorter, it is perhaps not surprising that people may have taken high office at ages we would today regard as relatively young, but were people in their thirties and forties in the 18th and 19th centuries any more or less capable of being world leaders than people of a similar age today? It is surely questionable. In truth, the records of young leaders around the world throughout history are no better or worse than those who were far older.

Certainly, there have been some stinkers, such as Sebastian Kurz, who became chancellor of Austria when he was just 31, and wasn’t much cop. Likewise, despite supposedly making the trains run on time, you cannot really say that Benito Mussolini, who became Italian prime minister at 39, had an admirable record.

But then there are plenty of examples of prime ministers elected in their thirties who have proved to be at least competent, whether or not you agree with their politics. Sanna Marin of Finland, Leo Varadkar of Ireland, and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand all bagged the top job when they were in their thirties, and made or are making a reasonable fist of it. Granted, they have all made missteps, but then every leader of whatever age has done so.

Attal is the youngest person currently serving as a head of state or government in the world (AFP via Getty)

One of the reasons why we tend to lambast the likes of Attal for their youth is because we expect our leaders to have had some decent life experience. Ideally, we like them to have a family, have held down some form of normal job, and to have seen the world. This, we suppose, enables a prime minister to really understand what people need and want. But does this really hold water? It surely does not require decades of life experience to know that people essentially want security, peace and prosperity.

Besides, youth is a positive advantage for being a leader. The role of prime minister and president is today far more demanding than it was a century ago. Decisions need to be made almost instantly, and the job often seems to require about two hours of sleep. Image is also vitally important, and youth – as well as glamour – are vote winners in the media age. The senescence of Biden and Trump surely count against them, with Biden simply looking far too frail for the role.

While the young political leader is not necessarily a new phenomenon, our greater life expectancy means that when a young prime minister leaves office, they still have many decades to fill. It is often said of sportspeople that they die twice – the first time when they retire from sport, and the second when they do actually die. The same is true of prime ministers when their terms end. Suddenly, they are bereft of all that power, status and trappings, and they find themselves once more as normal citizens.

Attal with outgoing prime minister 62-year-old Elisabeth Borne (Reuters)

What this means is that the role of the prime minister almost seems a stepping stone rather than an end in itself. While some, such as Cameron, struggle to find a role, the likes of Blair and Obama seem to have kept themselves busy. Judging by her social media presence, Marin seems to be leading a fulfilled life of a glamorous globetrotter, and doubtless, Sunak will find a new role for himself as a tech bro on the American west coast. Although it is too early to speculate how Attal will fare, if his political career ends in his mid-forties, he will have at least three decades of working life to fill.

In some ways, the sense that being prime minister is just one of the things that a person does in their life almost diminishes the role. It no longer seems quite the apogee it was, and the presence of increasing numbers of former prime ministers pootling around the world makes them seem two a penny. This, then, may be the biggest drawback about youth taking high office – it makes the role seem just a little too easy. Of course, it is far from it, as Attal is about to find out.