French president Emmanuel Macron has named his ally Francois Bayrou as the new prime minister and tasked the veteran centrist with steering the country out of its second major political crisis in months.

The priority for Mr Bayrou will be passing a special law to roll over the 2024 Budget, with a nastier battle over a fresh Budget early next year. Mr Macron's last PM, Michel Barnier, was ousted after three months following a no-confidence vote. It was triggered after the former Brexit negotiator controversially used special constitutional powers to force through his Budget, made up of €60 billion (£50bn) in tax hikes and spending cuts, without a vote.

Mr Bayrou, 73, is expected to put forward his list of ministers in the coming days but is likely to face the same existential difficulties as Mr Barnier did in steering legislation through a hung parliament comprising three warring blocs, a left-wing alliance, the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen and Mr Macron's own centrist bloc. Mr Bayrou's proximity to the deeply unpopular president is also likely to prove a vulnerability.

Mr Macron is halfway through his second term as president, which is due to end in 2027, and Mr Bayrou will be his fourth prime minister this year.

French politics has been deadlocked ever since Mr Macron called snap parliamentary elections in the summer with the aim of giving his centrists a clear mandate. But the plan backfired and left no single party in control of parliament.

The left-wing alliance The New Popular Front - which includes the Socialists, the far-left France Unbowed and a number of other parties - actually topped the July election, while National Rally was the single party with the most votes. But Mr Macron's centrists eventually struck a deal with the centre-right and conservatives to form a government and Mr Barnier was appointed as prime minister.

The announcement of Mr Barnier's successor comes two days after a spokesperson for the outgoing government said Mr Macron was seeking a political deal that would allow him to both name a new prime minister and "guarantee the stability of the country".

Maud Bregeon, the spokesperson, said Macron insisted there was at the moment no "broader" political alliance than the current one. She was relaying comments made by Macron during a weekly cabinet meeting.

Ms Bregeon said on Wednesday that two options were being considered. The first one would be to find a way to "broaden the alliance", she said, implicitly suggesting some leftists could join the government in addition to centrists and conservatives. That could give the future government a majority in the assembly.

She said the other option would have been to make a deal with opposition parties on the left so that they commit not to vote through any no-confidence motion -- even though they would not be governing parties, Ms Bregeon said.

Since last week, Mr Macron has held talks with politicians from the left and the right, including Socialist leaders who now appear vital in efforts to form a more stable government. Any involvement of the Socialist Party in a coalition may cost Macron in next year's Budget.

"Now we will see how many billions the support of the Socialist Party will cost," a government adviser said on Friday.

Discussions have not involved the hard-left France Unbowed party of Jean-Luc Melenchon since Mr Macron said he would only speak with more moderate political forces.

In a 10-minute address to the nation last week, Mr Macron accused the extreme left and right of thinking only about themselves and not the voters after they voted to oust Mr Barnier, adding to earlier criticism that they were the "coalition of the irresponsible".

The president said the parties had united in what he called "an anti-Republican front" and added: "I won't shoulder other people's irresponsibility".

Mr Macron will hope Mr Bayrou can stave off no-confidence votes until at least July, when France will be able to hold a new parliamentary election - the constitution says there cannot be fresh elections within 12 months - but his own future as president will inevitably be questioned if the government should fall again.

Mr Bayrou, the founder of the Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, which has been a part of Mr Macron's ruling alliance since 2017, has himself run for president three times, leaning on his rural roots as the longtime mayor of the southwestern town of Pau.

Mr Macron appointed Mr Bayrou as justice minister in 2017 but he resigned only weeks later amid an investigation into his party's alleged fraudulent employment of parliamentary assistants. Mr Bayrou was cleared of fraud charges this year.

Mr Bayrou's first real test will come early in the new year when politicians need to pass a belt-tightening 2025 Budget bill. However, the fragmented nature of the National Assembly, rendered nigh-on ungovernable after the snap election in June, means Mr Bayrou will likely be living day to day, at the mercy of the president's opponents, for the foreseeable future.

Mr Barnier's Budget bill, which was intended to assuage investors increasingly concerned by France's 6 per cent deficit, was deemed too miserly by the far right and left, and the government's failure to find a way out of the gridlock has led to French borrowing costs pushing higher still.