After a chaotic week that saw seven of Theresa May's senior cabinet ministers resign (including her second Brexit commissioner in six months), London business leaders poured salt in the prime minister's wounds late Friday by leaking the text of a letter they will reportedly be sending to MPs next week urging them to reject May's 'best of all possible deals' and instead advocate for a "no deal" Brexit where the UK and EU fall back on WTO rules, according to the Telegraph.

After more than a year of increasingly fraught negotiations, May has pulled off an incredible feat - she and her cabinet have produced a deal that is hated by both Brexiteers and remainers alike.

And as Bloomberg illustrates in the graphic below, even a cursory look at a possible vote breakdown shows that the odds of May passing her deal as-is are not looking good (though the EU has reportedly signaled that it might be open to reworking some of the details surrounding the backstop to make it more palatable to members of the European Research Group, the contingent of rapidly pro-Brexit conservative MPs).

And with May facing a grueling schedule between now and Brexit day...

...And myriad opportunities to stumble into a 'no deal' scenario...

(Courtesy of BBC)

...it's somewhat surprising that Deutsche Bank analysts argued in a note to clients released on Friday that they still expect a 'soft Brexit' as their 'base case'. Specifically, they expect a modified version of the current deal passing at the last minute after Theresa May survives a leadership challenge, but fails to push the deal in its current form through Parliament. If the EU refuses to renegotiate, any modified deal would probably favor a softer Brexit. If she can't rally support for that deal (presumably by winning over votes from Labour), her best option at that point would be to call for another referendum. A day earlier, DB set the odds at 50% that May either calls for a second referendum or resigns.

As even the casual observer could probably intuit by now, should May resign (or be forced out via a 'no confidence' vote, a scenario that would be decidedly worse for markets) the odds of a 'hard Brexit' would climb significantly. According to DB, the top four of the five most likely successors to May are all in favor of a "no deal" Brexit that would involve the UK and EU falling back on WTO rules. But while this would greatly increase the odds of a 'hard Brexit', it wouldn't be fair to interpret this as a foregone conclusion. That's because pro-remain Torys could respond by forcing a new general election which would risk handing power to Labour. Or they could simply accept a "hard Brexit" and whatever short term economic turmoil that might bring.

With all of this in mind, May's remaining cabinet ministers are reportedly staying on to try and influence the deal from the inside, with Liam Fox, May's secretary for international trade, insisting that "a deal is better than no deal."

Though, as the Spectator explained in a piece published Saturday, the Brexiteers fear that the current deal could leave the UK bound to the EU customs union indefinitely, while surrounding any say in how the trade bloc sets its rules.

In summary: The supposed ‘transition period’ could last indefinitely or, more specifically, to an undefined date sometime this century (“up to 31 December 20XX”, Art. 132). So while this Agreement covers what the government is calling Brexit, what we in fact get is: ‘transition’ + extension indefinitely (by however many years we are willing to pay for) + all of those extra years from the ‘plus 8 years’ articles. Should it end within two years, as May hopes, the UK will still be signed up to clauses keeping us under certain rules (like VAT and ECJ supervision) for a further eight years. Some clauses have, quite literally, a “lifetime” duration (Art.39). If the UK defaults on transition, we go in to the backstop with the Customs Union and, realistically, the single market. We can only leave the transition positively with a deal. But we sign away the money. So the EU has no need to give us a deal, and certainly no incentive to make the one they offered ‘better’ than the backstop. The European Court of Justice remains sovereign, as repeatedly stipulated. Perhaps most damagingly of all, we agree to sign away the rights we would have, under international law, to unilaterally walk away. Again, what follows relates (in most part) for the “transition” period. But the language is consistent with the E.U. imagining that this will be the final deal. 560+ page draft deal document, while the controversial backstop provision has taken most of the criticism, many of the deal's finer points remain deeply suspect.

But the language surrounding the backstop isn't the only component of the deal that's deeply suspect. Below is a list of the top 40 draft deal "horrors" (courtesy of the Spectator):