Much has been written about the divisions in the Tory party and the realignment of the right. I'd be failing in my Marxian duties if I didn't link the Tories' troubles to the crisis of capitalism. So here goes.

For years, there have been - roughly speaking - two strands of Conservatism, which can coexist in the same person: a sceptical, melancholy strand which aims at managing decline; and a more programmatic one.

The latter - associated with Thatcherism, the Britannia Unchained crew and Tory defectors to Ukip - goes like this: if only we can shrink the state, cut red tape, get out of the EU and restrict workers' rights, we'll unleash the dynamism of British entrepreneurs and enjoy strong growth.

However, whilst this might have worked in the 80s, it's questionable whether it'll work now. If the secular stagnationists are right, capitalism has lost its mojo, and there's no underlying dynamism just waiting to be unlocked. And if wage-led growth theory is right, bashing workers might merely depress aggregate demand.

Herein, perhaps, lies a reason for the growth of crony capitalism, about which some Tories are sincerely uncomfortable; in secular stagnation with a dearth of monetizable investment opportunities, capitalism doesn't have the oomph to grow under its own steam, so it needs the state to create and guarantee sources of profits.

We can see the two strands of Conservatism as mirroring the question about whether secular stagnation exists. Programmatic Tories deny the problem and think that another dose of Thatcherism is sufficient, whilst the sceptical-melancholy tendency fears that we might be in a stagnant world so that free market policies won't work now even if they worked before.

Now, I'm not saying that the Tories are having the debate about secular stagnation and wage-led growth explicitly - merely that there's a close analogy between the debate on the right and the debate among economists about the underlying vitality of capitalism. Some Tories have always been good at understanding things tacitly and intuitively.

The question: should we massively shrink the state and leave the EU, or should we merely try to shore up crony capitalism? is rooted in a question about the very nature of capitalism. With the latter in doubt, conflict within the Tory party is to be expected.