Ex-French PM seeks to join Macron team

Incoming French president Emmanuel Macron was starting to build his centrist government yesterday, with his former Socialist boss jockeying for position in a radically changed political landscape.

Macron, 39, was elected France's youngest-ever president on Sunday, crushing far-right leader Marine Le Pen after a bruising campaign that left France's traditional parties by the wayside.

He faces a huge task to unite a fractured, anxious country and to win a parliamentary majority in June's general election, without which he could struggle to implement his ambitious reform agenda.

His victory at the head of a year-old pro-EU movement that has presented itself as a home for progressives of all stripes has blown up France's long-standing left-right political divide.

Yesterday, former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls -- a failed candidate for his party's presidential nomination -- said he wanted to run for parliament on Macron's ticket.

"The Socialist Party is dead, it is behind us," Valls, a reform-minded PM from 2014 to 2016 when Macron was economy minister, told RTL radio. "I will be candidate for the presidential majority and I wish to join the list (of candidates) of his movement," Valls said, while insisting that he remained a Socialist.

France's next leader, who will be inaugurated on Sunday taking over from Socialist President Francois Hollande, has yet to name his prime minister.