Has the moment arrived to give National Front the seats it deserves?

So that's all right, then. France's flirtation with the far right was just a Gallic affair born of frustration with boring, bland, ineffectual cohabitation.

Now we can all sleep easy knowing that French voters have not only settled back into the comfortable rut of two-party politics, but throttled the serpent of the far right, just as it was rearing its head.

Unfortunately, it is not all right at all. President Chirac is in the commanding position that he is today only because, way back on 21 April, more people voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen than for the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin.

There were special reasons for this, as there are for most political surprises. The only way voters could register their dissatisfaction with the centrist "cohabitation" was to vote for one of the many fringe candidates or not to vote at all – and they did both in sufficient numbers to give Mr Le Pen the edge. Having shocked themselves by eliminating Mr Jospin, they then rushed to dissociate themselves from the shame of supporting the far right and threw themselves into the Chirac camp.

The effect persisted through the parliamentary elections. Mr Chirac now has a majority to rival that of Tony Blair in Britain and one that should see him through to the end of his term.

Yet, despite all reports to the contrary, France's extreme right did not crawl back into its cave. True, it was thrashed by the combined forces of Mr Chirac and the Socialists in the second round and it did not increase its vote. But in its far north and eastern strongholds, and especially in the south, its vote was almost unchanged.

The parliamentary elections show a similar pattern. Its proportion of the overall vote fell from 17 to 11.3 per cent, partly because of the lower turn-out and partly because the far right contests far from all seats. But in its strongholds, the far right maintained its support. The electoral system simply does not translate this into parliamentary representation. After yesterday's run-offs, the centre right ended up with 399 seats, the Socialists took 140, the Communists – who attracted just 4.8 per cent of the first-round vote – won 21 seats, and even the Greens, with a bare 1 per cent, took three. The National Front won not a single seat.

"And a jolly good thing, too," chorus French liberals and their supporters across Europe. But the fact is that 11 per cent of French voters, 6 million people, have in effect been disenfranchised; and in the south, it amounts to as much as one-third of the electorate.

Nor was its racism the only reason the National Front attracted support. Crime was a powerful consideration among rural voters, as were economic woes and resentment of the Paris elite. These are powerful sentiments, and the new government will store up big trouble if it ignores them. Instead, it needs to make a choice.

It can ban the NF as a racist mob that should have no place in a modern democracy. Or it can treat it as a legitimate political party and stop stacking the system against it. In the first case, some far-right views would probably be co-opted by the mainstream right; others would spin off underground. In the second, the NF would gain a voice in the National Assembly and have to argue its case.

Either option would be more honest and democratic than the present situation, which allows the far right to present itself as the victim. Alas, the centre right's big majority allows France to duck the choice once again.