A key debate and vote in the European Parliament on the giant Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) were both cancelled during 24 hours of dramatic twists and turns that saw the "dirty last-minute deal" between the main EU political parties, agreed two weeks ago, fall apart.

Things began yesterday, when an e-mail was sent to MEPs on behalf of Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament. It informed them that the text on TTIP agreed by the European Parliament's trade committee (INTA) a fortnight ago would not be voted on as previously agreed. The reason given was that there were so many amendments to the text—more than 200—that it was not possible to consider them in the plenary session. Schulz was therefore asking the INTA committee to re-work the text, taking into account some of the amendments, and discarding others.

Although the European Parliament vote on the TTIP text was cancelled, the plan was to continue with the debate today. But in yet another surprise, early this morning the MEPs voted by an extremely narrow margin—183 in favour and 181 against—to postpone the debate as well. The earliest that these could now take place is July, although they may be pushed into autumn.

Underlying these moves is a growing discontent among the left-wing S&D group with the INTA committee's compromise text, particularly the way it left open the door for the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. One amendment to the committee's text, which called for the European Parliament to "oppose the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in TTIP," was gaining support among S&D MEPs.

In the end, TTIP's supporters in the European Parliament seem to have decided that allowing a debate would have risked revealing that the earlier near-unanimous support for TTIP among MEPs had evaporated, with many increasingly sceptical of the benefits of TTIP. That would have damaged the deal's political chances, and so TTIP proponents pushed to drop the discussions as well as the vote for now.

Naturally, the two main political groups are putting the blame on the other side for the fiasco, while the EU Greens blame both of them. One thing that does emerge from the confusion is that TTIP is becoming even more of a controversial area in the European Parliament, not least because public opposition continues to grow: just this week, the Stop TTIP online petition passed the two million mark, and is well on its way to gaining 2.5 million signatures from EU citizens.