Sterling dropped almost half a per cent against the dollar in the wake of Theresa May's much-anticipated Brexit speech in Florence, where she reiterated that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
The UK currency fell as low as $1.3486 after the Prime Minister outlined her proposal for a two-year "implementation period" after March 2019 but also warned that she was still prepared to pull the UK out of the bloc without a deal at all, an outcome widely seen as an economic disaster for the UK.
It ended the trading down 0.4 per cent at $1.3525. Against the euro the pound fell 0.54 per cent at €1.1310.
Commenting on the Florence speech, Kathleen Brooks of City Index said: "The fact that the pound is lower after the speech suggests that May failed to deliver everything that was expected."
The currency is currently around 5.7 per cent higher against the dollar than at the end of August, and is trading around its highest since the 23 June 2016 Brexit vote, when the pound experienced a record one-day fall.
