Compromise may be Macron's only hope of restoring confidence Paul Taylor

Having failed to solve France's political crisis with a prime minister dependent on the far right, President Emmanuel Macron is exploring a deal with the Socialist party (PS) to give the country a new government, pass an overdue budget and avert financial turmoil.

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But his room for manoeuvre is severely limited and a non-aggression pact with the centre left may be only a temporary fix.

Last week was humiliating for the centrist president, seen as a great hope for European leadership when he was first elected in 2017. Macron's first choice of prime minister, after his impulsive dissolution of the National Assembly in June led to a hung parliament, was Michel Barnier, the EU's master Brexit negotiator. But the Alpine rambler failed to weave his consensus-building magic on stubborn French politicians who didn't want to share responsibility for public spending cuts - and are already jostling for the race to succeed Macron.

Barnier made one concession after another to try to entice Marine Le Pen, leader of the hard-right antiimmigration National Rally, into keeping his government alive, but secured no goodwill in exchange. Le Pen ordered her deputies to vote for a no-confidence motion tabled by Jean-Luc Mélenchon's hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party, pulling the plug on modern France's shortest-lived premiership.

While politicians in Paris squabbled over Barnier's fall, France's diminished influence in Europe was dramatically displayed the next day when Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, flew to Uruguay in defiance of Macron's opposition, to sign a trade deal with South American countries in the Mercosur grouping.

France fears the EU will be flooded with cheap beef and soya beans produced to lower standards than in Europe.