By Sean Curran BBC News parliamentary correspondent

We are barely half way through August and already we have had reports that some Tory young Turks from the Conservatives' liberal wing are threatening a breakaway party.

Now from the right wing of the party comes a pamphlet which declares that most of the Tory spokesmen "spout baloney" and concludes that the Conservatives have wasted their first five years in opposition.

All this navel gazing distracts attention from the government, which tries to keep its head down during August

Perhaps it is the heat, but the Conservative Party appears to have forgotten that golden political rule - "when you're in a hole stop digging".

For the past five years the party has been flatlining in the opinion polls with just thirty-five per cent of the vote.

And in spite of this - or perhaps because of this - the Tories just cannot stop fighting amongst themselves.

Ugly rumours

At the start of the summer, Iain Duncan-Smith, keen to portray the Conservatives as a kinder, gentler, more inclusive party, replaced the party chairman, David Davis - who was on holiday in Florida at the time - with Theresa May.

The reshuffle triggered the usual dark mutterings about conspiracies and leadership challenges.

Then at the start of this week we learnt that a group of young Tories - supporters of the failed leadership candidate Michael Portillo and his liberal social policies - had threatened to create a new "Start Again Party".

Rupert Darwall was special adviser to then Chancellor Norman Lamont

There have been the inevitable comparisons with the SDP which broke away from the Labour Party in the 1980s and helped keep Labour out of power.

The SDP had a high profile "Gang of Four" (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers) and the SAP appears to have at the most fifty young Tories and no household names.

But it is the summer and stories of plots and treason are just the stuff refresh the imaginations of journalists suffering from a drought of political news.

Collobaration comparison

And now we have a pamphlet from the Centre for Policy Studies - a think tank founded by Sir Keith Joseph in the heady days of early Thatcherism - which calls on the Tories to get back to basics and concentrate on the free market, smaller government and tax cuts.

The author, Rupert Darwell - a former advisor to Norman Lamont - accuses Iain Duncan Smith of a collaborationist "Vichy" response to Blairism.

He says the party is "paralysed - trapped between the fear that Tony Blair has colonised its ideological heartland and the fear that Conservative principles are inherently unpopular".

Duncan Smith says detailed policy work is essential

Think tanks are, of course, supposed to stimulate debate and argument but this latest pamphlet appears to represent a significant strand of Tory thought - many in the party are desperate to establish some "clear blue water" between themselves and Labour.

All this navel gazing distracts attention from the government which - having learnt some hard lessons from early spin filled summers - tries to keep its head down during August.

Even the row over Environment Minister Michael Meacher's comments has been overshadowed by the reports of Tory infighting.

The two main factions are described (by Conservatives) as Mods and Rockers.

Conference battles?

The Mods want change and are pushing for more women, gay and ethnic minority candidates.

The Rockers are defenders of the old faith and think this is all window dressing.

The good news for the government is that in a few weeks the Conservatives will travel to Bournemouth for their annual conference.

There, true to the traditions of the original Mods and Rockers, the Tories will be able to scrap by the seaside.