'No other option': French PM Attal likely to stay on, at least for now
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00:00with me here on set as our French politics expert, editor Mark Perelman.
00:05Mark, do you agree with that? I mean do you think Gabriel Attal at this stage
00:08is probably likely to stay on? Yes, first of all because there's no
00:12other option and second because he already opened the door to that
00:16possibility yesterday night. Why? Because the
00:20Olympic Games are just around the corner
00:24and obviously he's looked at the new National Assembly,
00:28three blocks, no clear majority, far from it
00:31and so this will take time and you can't
00:34have a power vacuum for many reasons so it's unlikely Emmanuel Macron will
00:41accept his resignation. What you do have and what you did see yesterday
00:48was clearly the distancing between Emmanuel Macron
00:52who appointed Gabriel Attal just a few months ago
00:55but since Emmanuel Macron's decision to call for that election
00:59he didn't tell Gabriel Attal until an hour before
01:03he called that election. Gabriel Attal didn't take this well and yesterday
01:09night he began his short speech by saying I didn't
01:13ask for that snap elections however I made sure I would fight for it
01:18and he also said something that's notable he said
01:22the power will shift to the parliament meaning
01:25away from the presidential palace so Gabriel Attal probably who was
01:31re-elected by the way to the parliament clearly has his own
01:35ambitions for the future be it in parliament or
01:39maybe for the next presidential election in
01:412027 but yes we'll have to see whether he remains Prime Minister
01:46we'll probably know this in a few minutes. Yeah it's interesting to see I
01:50was just watching behind you those images of
01:51Attal making his speech I guess Richard Worley in the last hour said
01:54indeed it was a very presidential looking speech wasn't it?
01:58What do you think comes next then because
02:01okay Attal may stay in place at least for the Olympics but
02:05Emmanuel Macron at some point is going to have to move who's he going to look
02:08towards is he going to look towards some kind of technocrat government might he
02:12look towards the left let's not forget of course that
02:14block did come in first. The logic would be that he would
02:18propose the leading block that is this new
02:22leftist alliance to put forth a name for Prime Minister
02:27this is what the left has been demanding since yesterday night
02:32none of the other blocks have said we want
02:35the position of Prime Minister clearly the national rally has
02:39said that before but after yesterday this small performance they didn't
02:43and the Macron camp starting with Gabriel Attal by
02:47saying I will resign he's essentially implying that it's not
02:50ours to have so the only option is a Prime Minister from the left the
02:56problem is how do you get there because they
02:59agreed to disagree within this alliance and they've said this morning yesterday
03:04night okay we'll get together and come out with
03:07a name this week for Prime Minister how do you
03:12choose because there's a big problem an elephant in the room if you will
03:15by the name of Jean-Luc Mélenchon he is the leader of France Unbowed
03:19he was the first to take the airwaves yesterday after the result
03:24it was already the case a week ago however
03:27he is a polarizing figure and he's not wanted by the leaders
03:32of the other members of the coalition the socialists
03:35the greens the communists have said have repeated
03:39Jean-Luc Mélenchon is not the candidate we want
03:43and he's saying you know I will not impose myself but I will not
03:47exclude myself so who do you come up with and this is
03:51going to be now a very difficult task because they
03:55have to agree between themselves but if you look at the
03:59figures the absolute majority is 289 this coalition
04:04if it remains a coalition is over 100 seats shy from that absolute
04:10majority so you you not only have to agree to
04:13find a name that is okay with the rest of the
04:16coalition but also be able to form a majority in parliament
04:20with other elements this will not be the national rally
04:23the only possibility is an alliance or partial alliance with Macron's bloc
04:31or part of Macron's bloc this is the only way
04:33you can find a majority right now and obviously this is not
04:37usual for France to negotiate like in Germany in Italy or other parliamentary
04:42democracies because it's not a purely parliamentary democracy here
04:46what we have