By Alexandra Fouch� BBC News Online

France's political parties are readying themselves for their annual fest of summer conferences, but for one party in particular, there is much soul-searching to be done.

Everything has not been totally lost - there is still time, over the next few years, to regroup

Party advisers, Lucien Osmont and Regis Turrini

The Socialist Party has been in agony since the slap in the face it received in the presidential elections, and the rout it suffered in parliamentary polls soon afterwards.

The party faithful meeting in the coastal town of La Rochelle will be reflecting on this dismal performance and looking for ways of making sure it never happens again.

Their spirits may be lowered even further by a book published on the eve of the conference, which dissects the party's failings in the election campaign, and in particular the shortcomings of its candidate, Lionel Jospin.

Liberal drift

The author, former Housing Minister Marie-Noelle Lienemann, condemns Mr Jospin for resigning so soon after the party's downfall - the night of the first-round results.

It was a "shameful" mistake, she says, that the former French President and Socialist leader Francois Mitterrand would have never made in his party's "hour of need".

To leave an empty chair in the face of defeat does not seem to me dignified coming from the leader of the left, who aspired in our name to the state's highest functions

Marie-Noelle Lienemann

She also deplores his inability to connect with people, which she says stems from the fact that Mr Jospin was a party cadre lacking experience of grassroots politics.

"Shaking hands, listening to problems, sharing yourself with the voters was all alien to him," she says in her book, My Own Inventory, published on Thursday.

But other factors in the party's defeat include, she says, a tendency to drift towards liberal policies under the combined influence of party stalwarts such as former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Umbrella idea

The key question party members face is whether to go back to traditional socialism, championed by old-guard Socialist Henri Emmanuelli, or opt for a Blairite-type move towards the centre ground.

Hollande: Little progress towards recovery

Under a new leader, Francois Hollande, appointed after the election defeat, the party seems to have made little progress turning its fate around.

Mr Hollande, along with Mr Strauss-Kahn, supports the idea of creating an umbrella party to respond to the threat of the right's alliance party, the UMP.

This alliance of the left would encompass all left-wing parties, including the Greens and the Communists.

Mr Fabius, now number two in the party, says the Socialist Party "doesn't simply intend to remain the party of the 20%-25% [support]".

He puts the party's rout down to its perceived distance from core voters - traditionally the poor working classes - and pledges to forego the "langue de bois" - the obscure "wooden" language of politicians.

Utopia

Many analysts believe an alliance between Mr Fabius and Strauss-Kahn - who for the moment is watching from the wings - would be favoured by a large section of the party.

"Everything has not been totally lost. There is still time, over the next few years, to regroup and take the lead," wrote two party advisers, Lucien Osmont and Regis Turrini, in the Liberation newspaper on Tuesday.

"We need a heavy-duty cure, not a flimsy consolation."

Another group of Socialists, calling itself Utopia, wrote in the same newspaper on Wednesday that the party should get back to basics by putting education, culture and welfare above capitalism.

These are among the ideas that will be elaborated at the La Rochelle conference.

Concrete decisions do not have to be made until the party's annual Congress next spring in Dijon, where members will hope to launch a programme to bring the party back to power.