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Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a humiliating defeat for her key Brexit law on Wednesday after pro-European members of her own party openly defied her orders in a vote in Parliament. The vote in the UK Parliament was described as being “knife-edge” with the BBC’s chief political correspondent, Norman Smith, called it a “Big Bananas moment” for May. In the end, May lost by a narrow margin, with 309 voting for and 305 against, and as a result, UK members of parliament - not Theresa May and her Cabinet - will have the final say on Brexit.

The euphoria of the past month has ended with a thud and BTFDers are strangely missing as the commodity chill out of China (which overnight became full blown carnage), has unleashed a global risk-off phase ahead of today's critical CPI data, resulting in broad and sharp selling across global markets, as European stocks followed declines in Asia while bonds and gold advanced. The equity retreat, which spread to U.S. stock futures, started with last night's sharp puke in Chinese commodities.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

There can be little doubt that the British, in general, have a sense of humor. And that’s perhaps the lens through which we should view the country these days. After all, what other options do we have? A comment yesterday to a Guardian article sums up the situation quite perfectly in just a few words (note: Dignitas has something to do with assisted dying):

As we discussed (see here) when Brexit talks resumed this week, the EU is piling pressure on Theresa’s May’s weakened government to extort more money out of the UK in the divorce settlement – now termed “moment of clarification” in EU parlance. Despite rumours before the latest talks began, that Theresa May was prepared to increase the UK’s offer, if this was the case, the EU wasn’t impressed. In the post-talks press conference. the beleaguered Brexit Secretary, David Davis, stated that there is positive momentum in the negotiations…

On Friday - a day many have called  "the most important day for Brexit since the referendum" - Theresa May will delivers her much anticipated Brexit speech in Florence. The roughly 5000-word speech is scheduled at begin around 09:15 EDT and is expected to provoke an immediate response from Brussels.