François Bayrou has been ousted in a confidence vote after only nine months as prime minister, collapsing his minority government and plunging France into a political crisis.

Bayrou, 74, will hand his resignation to Emmanuel Macron, his longterm centrist ally, on Tuesday morning.

The French president now faces the challenge of appointing his third prime minister in only one year, and the fifth since he began his second term of office in 2022. His office said he would make the decision “in the coming days”.

Bayrou was toppled when 364 deputies voted that they had no confidence in the government. Just 194 gave him their confidence. Bayrou had called the vote himself as a last-ditch gamble for support, saying he needed backing from parliament for austerity measures to reduce the public debt.

In a speech to parliament before the vote, Bayrou had said France was under threat from its “inexorable swamp of debt” and must find a “compromise” on a budget. He said if some “minimal” understanding and consensus was not found in the divided parliament then “government action will be destined to fail”.

When the leaders of opposition party groups, from the left to the far right, made fiercely critical speeches against him, he said: “I won’t respond to insults” and warned that the image of verbal “violence and contempt” among politicians was damaging democracy.

Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally’s parliamentary group told MPs that Bayrou’s departure was “the end of the agony of a phantom government”.

Le Pen, who was found guilty in March of the embezzlement of European parliamentary funds through a fake jobs scam and banned from running for office for five years, said Macron must call a parliamentary election immediately, even if it meant she could not run again for her seat in northern France. She has appealed against her conviction and an appeal trial will begin in January.

Macron, who stunned the political world by calling a snap parliament election last year which resulted in a chamber divided into three blocs – left, centre and far right – has expressed reluctance to call another vote. The far right leads the polls and a new election could result in a similar hung parliament.

French deputies – Bayrou confidence motion vote

Politicians on the left, which won the most seats in last year’s election, but fell well short of an absolute majority, have said Macron should appoint a prime minister from their camp.

During Monday’s debate, Boris Vallaud called Macron “a defeated president” who he held responsible for “impoverishing the poor, enriching the rich and turning his back on the future”.

The Socialist MP said Bayrou’s decision to call the vote was not “an act of courage, but a cop-out”.

Mathilde Panot of La France Insoumise, a leftwing party, said Bayrou had been “severely beaten”. She added: “He wanted his hour of truth; he got it.”

Panot said that as just a third of parliament had given its confidence to Bayrou, Macron’s economic policies had a minority of support and he should also resign. The president, whose term ends in 2027, has always ruled out stepping down.

As head of state with authority on foreign policy and national security, Macron directly appoints a prime minister to run domestic affairs. But since last year’s election there has been no absolute majority in the national assembly, creating a form of political deadlock and disagreement on the budget. This means there is no certainty that a new prime minister would be safe from being ousted.

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France is facing a day of protest actions on Wednesday organised online by a movement called “Block Everything”, which could see roads, schools and businesses shut down. Public sector strikes are to follow.

The priority for Macron is to appoint a prime minister able to push through a budget for 2026.

Bayrou’s unpopular plan for a €44bn (£38bn) budget squeeze and austerity programme to reduce France’s public debt is now certain to be shelved, including his contested proposal to scrap two public holidays. Any new government will return to the drawing board.

Bayrou is the second PM to fall since the snap election in June last year – the rightwing Michel Barnier was ousted after just three months in December. Bayrou had become the most unpopular French prime minister since 1958, largely over his unpopular budget but also his perceived lack of government action.

His popularity had also been dented by his stance on an abuse scandal at the Bétharram private Catholic school near his home in south-west France.

Bayrou sent several of his children to the school, where his wife also taught catechism. A parliamentary report in July found Bayrou failed to act to prevent physical and sexual abuse at the school when he served as education minister between 1993 and 1997.

Bayrou was questioned by a parliamentary inquiry about whether he knew about abuse at Bétharram and covered it up. He said he had “hidden nothing”, saying his foes were leading a political campaign of “destruction” against him.

His criticisms of the parliamentary inquiry cost him support on Monday night even among his own centrists.

The northern politician Violette Spillebout, who co-chaired the parliamentary inquiry, said that despite being a fellow centrist, she abstained in the confidence vote out of anger at Bayrou’s comments on TV this weekend that the parliamentary inquiry was a “political tribune”. She said his comments were an “insult to victims”.