London: French President Emmanuel Macron has made a dramatic move to stare down his rivals and impose his agenda on a fractured parliament by restoring a key ally to the prime minister’s job just four days after he quit.

Macron re-appointed Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister on Friday (Saturday AEDT) and asked him to form a new ministry, spurning demands from political rivals for new elections to resolve years of division in the national assembly.

The stunning twist ended hopes among the assembly’s left-wing parties for a new prime minister from among their own ranks, after they held talks with Macron on Friday in a bid to end disputes over new measures to reduce the budget deficit.

Lecornu, the nation’s fifth prime minister in two years, said earlier this week that he expected the pr

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