IT’S soon that time of year again when Westminster falls silent and MPs and their camp followers pack their bags for what used to be their annual trip to the seaside, Brighton, Blackpool or Bournemouth, but is now just as likely to be Manchester, Birmingham or Liverpool.

The whole shebang begins with Labour, whose annual conference opens next weekend in Liverpool – perhaps appropriately, once the stronghold of Labour’s Militant Tendency and now likely to be the place where the Corbyn-supporting Momentum group makes its most decisive mark on how the party is run.

It might also be the place where Labour meets for the last time as a unified party.

Spoiler alert – this columnist might be naïve, but not so naïve that he would attempt anything resembling a prediction. Politics has become so turbulent that any so-called expert making any prediction about contemporary politics, ain’t no expert.

So no predictions but a few words by way of explanation. Why is this year’s Labour conference any more likely to lead to a split than, say, last year’s pretty un-comradely get-together in Brighton?

First, because of good old Brexit, there’s always good old Brexit. Since the referendum, both main parties have been bitterly divided, but as the scheduled departure date draws near those divides have become ever more wide.

For the Tories it could be fatal, in terms of the survival of Mrs May’s Government (more of that in two weeks as the Tories gather in Birmingham) but it could be almost as problematic for Labour.

In theory Labour has an agreed line on Europe, about a Brexit that’s good for jobs and the economy, but that line is getting ever more difficult to hold as Brexit becomes, Exit. For if Labour decides not to support the deal that Mrs May brings back from Brussels, will its leadership back the growing clamour for a new referendum, as many of their members and MPs are now demanding?

Jeremy Corbyn’s lacklustre enthusiasm for EU membership (some interpret it as downright opposition) becomes clearer by the day, but if he refuses to support a so-called “People’s Vote” on the deal, will the more fervent Remainers in his party feel able to stay? No predictions, but the answer might be that some – no guesses as to how many – could see this as a red line and leave the party.

But there’s another reason why a Labour split might be on the cards and that’s because of the long-running issue of Labour and anti-Semitism. For some MPs, behind their genuine concern about the issue, lies a deep distrust of Mr Corbyn and a strong belief that under him Labour will never win an election.

The wounds are very deep, not just because of the anti-Semitism row but because at this year’s conference, Mr Corbyn and his supporters could greatly strengthen their position in the party. They probably have the votes to push through constitutional changes that would weaken the role of MPs in the process of electing a leader and, at the same time, strengthen the hand of party activists who want to deselect their local MP and replace him or her with someone more in line with their own political stance.

And this time round there’s a further complicating factor. In the week just gone the Boundary Commission has announced its findings. It had two tasks, one was to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and the other was to create more equal-sized constituencies.

These two initiatives could leave some centrist Labour MPs either with no seat at all, or facing intense competition for the those that have been redistributed. In this situation, those MPs seen as loyal to Mr Corbyn, probably have a better chance of being selected and so it would be no great surprise if some of Mr Corbyn’s critics, those who sees themselves under threat, either from local activists or the Boundary Commission, chose to jump before they are pushed.

In Brighton, Lloyd Russell-Moyle the Kemptown MP, is unlikely to face any challenge from local Corbyn-supporters but the Boundary Commission is more of a problem.

They have proposed re-shaping his constituency in way that turns it into a cliff-hanging marginal. Meanwhile, Peter Kyle in Hove has had his seat left largely intact by the Boundary Commission but still might face a deselection challenge by Momentum supporters. So although I have been trying not to make predictions, here’s a little ‘un – this year’s Labour Conference in Liverpool will not be a dull affair (and nor will the Tories in Birmingham in the week following).

Ivor Gaber is Professor of Political Journalism at the University of Sussex and was a political correspondent based at Westminster.