French President Emmanuel Macron appointed Antoine Armand as finance minister, thrusting a 33-year-old with limited political experience into an urgent budget battle in which he must bring fiscal discipline while maintaining tacit support from the far right to avoid government collapse.

The French government, which missed a deadline this week to set a blueprint to lower its debt and deficit, is struggling to meet fiscal requirements set by the E.U.

Sir Keir Starmer declined to rule out scrapping the single person council tax discount or cutting the farming budget.