New French PM named as François Bayrou aka ‘the Horse Whisperer’ who beat embezzlement expenses

A gentleman farmer nicknamed “the Horse Whisperer” – who was this year cleared of embezzlement charges – has been named Prime Minister of France.

François Bayrou, 73, has become the sixth politician in seven years to be handed the post. On Friday morning he was given the ‘poison chalice’ job by President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Bayrou’s appointment came a week after Michel Barnier, who is also 73, lost a no-confidence vote in the Paris National Assembly and was forced to resign. This made the former EU Brexit negotiator the shortest serving PM in the history of France.

Mr Macron has vowed to hang on despite a political crisis engulfing France. He and the new PM held a meeting lasting just under two hours at the Elysée Palace in Paris, and Mr Bayrou emerged as PM. His ‘nomination’ was confirmed by an official communique released by the Élysée Palace early on Friday afternoon.

Mr Bayrou was Mr Macron’s first Justice Minister in 2017 – but resigned after a month when his Modem party was implicated in a fraud enquiry in the European Parliament. This saw five MEPs convicted.

But Mr Macron today gave Mr Bayrou a second chance, as the political crisis engulfing France intensified.

Mr Macron’s dithering over the appointment has led to severe criticism from opponents, with MP Manuel Bompard, of the France Unbowed party, saying on Friday: ‘What a pathetic spectacle. For how long will the President of the Republic treat France as his playground?’

Beyond calling the job a ‘poison chalice’, others have described Matignon, the prime minister’s official residence in Paris, as ‘Hell’. But the President hopes his sixth prime minister since he came to power seven years ago will bring a massively divided parliament together, so ending months of paralysis.

Like Mr Barnier, Mr Bayrou is a veteran public figure well known to the French public for close to half-a-century. He was France’s education minister in the mid-90s, and is currently the mayor of Pau, in the south west of the country, where he still lives on the farm where he was born and brought up.

He particularly enjoys raising horses, hence his ‘Horse Whisperer’ nickname, after the book about a talented trainer by Nicolas Evans that was turned into the hit 1995 film starring Robert Redford and Scarlett Johansson.

Unlike Mr Barnier, he is also a serving MP, who leads MoDem, which stands for Democratic Movement. It is a centre Right, liberal Christian party which supported Mr Macron when he became France’s head of state in 2017.

This was when Mr Bayrou was first implicated in the corruption enquiry involving his party’s MEPs illegally diverting European taxpayers’ cash back to France. While Mr Bayrou was himself acquitted in February this year, five of his closest lieutenants were found guilty of stealing the equivalent of around £250,000.

The former MoDem MEPs received suspended prison sentences for setting up a ‘fraudulent system’ that operated over a seven year period, up until 2017. A coalition of the far-Right National Rally (RN) and Left Wing New Popular Front ended Mr Barnier’s administraton.

Mr Macron refused to resign himself, and said ‘the far-Right and the far-Left have united in an anti-republican front. He said: “I know that some are tempted to hold me responsible for this situation. It’s much more comfortable for them.”

The appointment of Mr Bayrou comes after an opinion poll for BFMTV showed 61% of French voters said they were worried by the political situation. Mr Macron had held crisis talks with leaders from all the main political parties, except for Marine Le Pen’s RN and the France Unbowed (LFI, La France Insoumise) of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The governmental instability in France has led to analysists predicting economic disaster. French bonds and stocks have been sold off at an alarming rate, and borrowing costs have spiralled.

Mr Barnier ultimately fell after failing to win parliamentary support for a social security budget aimed at saving the equivalent of £50billion. Unable to raise a majority in the hung parliament created by a snap election over the summer, Mr Barnier said he would push the budget through via a presidential decree.