THE cult 1990s game show Fort Boyard has always stuck in my mind. I was so young at the time that I didn’t completely understand what I was watching. With the dramatic music, aggressive acting, and countdown clocks, I thought the competitors really were trapped on the strange TV island set.

The concept is a useful one for the Tory Government. Participants face a series of indecipherable challenges, the threat of being trapped, and ominous financial risk. Theresa May and her three Brexit musketeers – Messrs Johnson, Davis, and Fox – have been scurrying around for two months trying to make sense of how they can attempt to leave the EU.

By now they should have realised they are lost in a complex maze, while holding an economic time-bomb in their hands. Look at it like a game show and consider whether you think they’ll escape.

Team Tory must prepare multiple sets of negotiations through new departments and staff – with Scotland, with the UK parliament, then with Europe. Davis and Fox, who have already made inaccurate statements on such trade talks, are tied to Johnson’s reputation on the continent as a liar and a buffoon for the undesirable task ahead.

Plans to delay these exit talks even further with the EU27 – every other EU state – came out at the weekend. Westminster is simply unprepared for the scale and nature of the Brexit challenge. Yet it’s crucial that people in Scotland understand how this could play out.

Back in the maze, Team Tory face an angry mob – the Brexit electorate – who demand further curbs on migration. But if they meet those demands they will be cornered by the EU27, who will eject the UK from the single market and damage the UK economy.

To make this worse, the EU refuses to begin negotiations until the UK triggers article 50 – which sets off a two-year countdown on the economic time-bomb in Theresa May’s hands. Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the only man to negotiate an EU-exit (Greenland’s from 1979-82), said there is no way the UK can reach an agreement in just two years.

This is crucial. If you’ve not been following the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) disputes, do some background reading to catch up. Modern trade deals are not fixated on removing “tariff barriers” (import/export taxes). TTIP, between the US and EU, faces popular opposition for undermining environmental standards, democratic oversight, and workers protection among other issues.

It’s three-and-a-half years since the TTIP process began, and EU voices are predicting the talks will collapse. CETA, the EU-Canada equivalent, hasn’t been implemented after eight years. This is long, tedious, and potentially fractious politics at play.

Maybe you have faith in Team Tory’s hidden powers and believe, somehow, a quickfire deal could be achieved with Europe. If the UK took a weak deal, it’s possible.

But that also requires that European nations reach a simple, united negotiating position. The EU Lisbon Treaty took eight years.

If you think that’s convoluted, leaving the EU single market would then mean repeating this negotiation process more than 50 times – just to keep the UK’s current international trade agreements.

The trapped musketeers have promised to launch speedy trade negotiations across the globe, which sounds bold and ambitious. But what’s the cost? More private health firms getting to bid for NHS contracts? Imports of food stuffed with dangerous chemicals? Lower safety and quality rules for manufacturing equipment?

In the medium term, rushing to establish bad trade deals could be the most dangerous approach of all. Maybe Team Tory would reject the quick buck, further deregulation, and privatisation in favour of protecting the public good?

I wish I could be so hopeful. Multi-billion-pound industries are now threatened by a trade deal vacuum. Scotch whisky could lose its international brand protection. Financial services could lose their “passporting”, the deal for free capital movement across Europe. The services sectors want continued access to continental procurement deals. Scotland’s food exports could face new barriers. Immediate political pressure will demand deals for those sectors – but at what cost in the fine print?

These challenges relate mainly to the trade aspect alone, and if anything this understates the scale of the task. Commentator David Allen Green has described Brexit as the “legal equivalent of separating conjoined twins”.

I’d go further. Imagine the same operation with blindfolded, inexperienced surgeons. Consider that two of the surgeons – Fox and Davis – can’t agree between them on how much anaesthetic to use. Imagine, then, that the patients take an anxious glance upwards, only to see the operators are joined by the blundering Boris Johnson.

Whether this operation takes two years or eight, it will hurt. That’s the variable timeframe that Scotland has to run for the emergency exit of Westminster’s Brexit maze.

Ultimately, this is not a game show. It is dangerous to gamble our prosperity upon how the Tories attempt to unravel, then rehash, Scotland’s economic relationships.

Michael Gray @GrayInGlasgow