Macron’s fourth premier this year faces the same budgetary headache as Michel Barnier – but the parliamentary equation has changed

The latest attempt to resolve France’s political and financial crisis might be dubbed “back to the future”.

The new prime minister, François Bayrou, was minister of education when Emmanuel Macron was still a schoolboy. The 73-year-old centrist, whom the president reluctantly appointed on Friday after days of closed-door wrangling after the fall of Michel Barnier’s short-lived government, was a vital ally and consigliere to the young Macron when he dynamited France’s political system in 2017 to win the presidency at the tender age of 39.