LIKE peeling a sea urchin with your bare hands. Loofahing with sandpaper. Polishing your eyeballs with stinging nettles. Watching Brexit unfold from Scotland this past week has been to stand horrified in the middle of the highway as your shouts of warning go unheeded, as the driver accelerates, black smoke gouts from the exhaust and the passengers grapple over the handbrake, squabbling only about whether they want to run you down or reverse over you.

Required equipment for the following column includes: some kind of helmet, a strong stomach and a strategy suit with a jelly pocket. You’ll also find A Numpty’s Guide to EU Law listed under additional reading. God help us.

At time of writing, Theresa May remains installed in her regeneration unit in Downing Street, as her aides try to sweep up all the springs and sprockets which the Prime Minister shed this week under friendly and unfriendly fire in the House of Commons. Postman Pat’s Transylvanian cousin, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is still trying to assemble the 48 letters of no confidence needed to put Theresa May’s leadership in jeopardy.

In parallel, we are told that Andrea Leadsom – whose concussed benevolence suggests she’s made a close study of the Ladybird Book of Full-Frontal Lobotomies – is convening a working group of the inner Cabinet to re-write Mrs May’s draft accord with the European Union. The Brexit all-stars tasked with adding more cowbell to the 585-page document consist of swither-in-chief Michael Gove, Liam Fox, Penny Mordaunt and the six-time winner of the Worst Cabinet Minister of the Year award, Chris Grayling.

This happy band may see themselves as a crack negotiating team, but in the cold light of day, the Frabjous Five look more like an underpowered am-dram production of The Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland leading tin men, scarecrows and cowardly British lions up the yellow brick road, to strains of “if I only had a brain”. The scenery may be collapsing, but their Brexit message to the Prime Minister comes straight out of the Cowardly Lion’s songbook.

“Yeah, it’s sad, believe me, Missy / When you’re born to be a sissy / Without the vim and verve / But I could change my habits / Never more be scared of rabbits / If I only had the nerve.”

It is astonishing – years after the Brexit vote was taken, with only months to go until March 29, 2019 – that five senior members of the UK Government still can’t get their heads around the idea that a complex bilateral treaty which has been months in the making cannot be unilaterally re-written in red, white and blue crayon in a back close in Whitehall in a matter of days.

These aren’t marginal Tory backwoodsmen, but apparently indispensable political characters who have been at the heart of the Conservative government since David Cameron led his party back into power. And they’re complete diddies.

Their nervous footering may be psychologically explicable, as a deeply damaged political party tries to stitch some semblance of itself back together before the “meaningful vote” on Theresa May’s deal in the Commons.

This is Tory displacement activity, pure and simple. Given the poison leaking on to the airwaves, you can only imagine the atmosphere hanging over Westminster. Civil wars are always the ugliest. They are like family rows on Boxing Day, tipple having been taken. They give you permission to dust off all the old, heavy books of grudges. Under the massive pressure, years of simmering tensions can’t help but flare.

What is not obvious, however, is why any of the rest of us should give Snow White and the Four Dwarves’ fantasies the time of day. To paraphrase Mahatma Gandhi, the Tory Brexiteers take themselves quite seriously enough for the both of us. The reality is, we are governed by ocean-going, titanium-clad, copper-bottomed, 24-carat chumps. Rule Britannia. Is this really the best we can do? Is this really the best we can hope for?

WHEN I think about why I support Scottish independence, I could give you many answers. I’m persuaded of the merits of self-government. It was a long-standing political tradition through four generations of my family. The word I keep coming back to, however, is responsibility. I would like Scots to be responsible for the major political decisions which affect our lives.

If there are mistakes, I’d like them to be our mistakes. If there are major judgements to me made, I’d prefer they are our judgements and not those dictated to us by the political pre-occupations of middle England. England is entitled to its politics and to be governed by whomsoever the voters choose. But this week, I feel completely drained by being subject to those choices.

I vividly remember a discussion I had with a friend back in 2014. He was swithering. Pro-European, pro-devolution, but unsold on independence, he liked the idea of justice, health and education policy being determined in Edinburgh, but wasn’t sure about repatriating the balance of reserved matters. I put a series of questions to him. Surveying the colossal wreck of Britain’s international reputation, the mayhem and folly in Westminster, I find myself asking similar questions now.

Would you rather Scotland’s relationship with the EU was being negotiated by Mike Russell or by David Davis, or Dominic Raab, or Stephen Barclay? Would you rather decisions about Scotland’s immigration policy are taken by Sajid Javid or almost any other member of the Scottish Parliament? Would you prefer Edinburgh shape our drugs policy, or are you prepared to leave it up to the Home Secretary, and vital health measures untaken as a consequence?

Take employment and industrial relations. Do you think Esther “if I only had a heart” McVey – um, sorry, that should read Amber Rudd – really shares your views on the rights of workers, or do you reckon the majority of MSPs in the Scottish Parliament are more likely to be closer to your sympathies?

When it comes to social security, are you content to leave the black work of the Universal Credit in the hands of Iain Duncan Smith and all his successors, rather than taking over responsibility for building a social security system and a society which would not and could not be condemned by the United Nations as driving low-earners towards a life in Britain which is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”?

I’m a pessimist about the British state and British politics, but the fallout from Brexit has bottomed out even my low expectations about the irredeemably ghastly way this country is governed. I’ve had it.

It remains in the interests of the cause of Scottish independence that the rest of the United Kingdom is nudged, shoved, tricked – or left alone to stumble into – the softest Brexit possible. Who knows what comes next. But one thing I see with absolute clarity. I’m exhausted by the sense of abject powerlessness and Scottish irrelevance the Brexit process has continuously underscored. Time and again, the UK government have made clear no hoots are given, whatever, for whatever views Holyrood might have about how we should leave the EU. The cynical pretence of consultation, the empty dumb shows of meetings, are just more Tory amateur dramatics.

In the days after the EU referendum, Theresa May raced up to Edinburgh to underscore that she would only activate Article 50 if she was able to secure a whole UK approach to Brexit. Within weeks, the Prime Minister had determined that her government would be the sole arbiter of where the British national interest lies – and everyone else could go hang. I’m sick of it. Sick through. Is this the best we can do? Is this the best we can hope for?