President Emmanuel Macron of France has sparked a political furore for suggesting unionists and workers at a factory protesting against job losses stop "wreaking f---ing havoc" and look for work elsewhere.

The opposition - from far-Left to far-Right - slammed the French president for "arrogance" and "contempt" from someone born with a "golden spoon in his mouth".

With the row over his choice of words snowballing, Mr Macron issued a semi-apology. Elysée Palace sources said that while he "takes nothing back in terms of content", he nevertheless "would not use in an official framework, the word 'bordel' (havoc), which he used in a private discussion".

But commentators said the apparently off-the-cuff aside - reminiscent of Norman Tebbit's famous 1981 call to the British unemployed to get "on (their) bike" and "look for work" - was in fact the latest in a string of carefully choreographed outbursts to show he is getting France moving.

His spokesman said that the "private remark" merely reflected "what many French people think".

Mr Macron's remark was aimed at unionists and workers at the threatened GM&S car parts plant, more than half of whose employees face losing their jobs in a takeover.