IF you haven’t seen the Brexit stare-off yet, check it out online because it’s one of the funniest things that’s happened in this process so far.

The writer Will Self and the Tory MP Mark Francois were on BBC Politics Live to talk about the EU referendum but ended up trying to out-stare each other. Neither blinked and neither budged until, in the tradition of all pointless arguments between men, a woman intervened to break it up. Not only was it delightfully mad, it was a pretty good metaphor for the Brexit process: immovable, irrational, ridiculous, and a little bit childish. It was also a reminder that, on the endless, difficult subject of leaving the EU, we still haven’t found the man or woman we need to break up the fighting.

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If there is any upside to be found in the whole thing (and you have to look pretty hard), it’s this: the face-off between Leavers and Remainers could delay, and possibly frustrate, Brexit, although the longer-term consequences are still unclear. Over the weekend, we heard Nicola Sturgeon say (again) that the chaos of Brexit makes Scottish independence more likely. Her deputy Keith Brown also said the mess of Brexit might be the point at which momentum for independence becomes unstoppable. In other words, the SNP is hoping, still, that the Brexit chaos will drive voters into their arms.

However, I wonder if we have really, properly looked for the clues in the chaos, the little signs to be found in the rubble, and asked what we can learn from them. The SNP keep arguing that the more people hate Brexit, the more they will love independence; some unionists, on the other hand, argue Brexit is a clue to how hard negotiating Scottish independence will be. But let’s leave Mr Self and Mr Francois staring at each other for a minute shall we and take a look at the actual parallels between leaving the EU and leaving the UK. The picture is more mixed that you might think.

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For a start, the UK is not the same as the EU, although the differences between them provide useful pointers. For instance – difficult as Brexit is – the fact that the UK is a sovereign state means it can leave the EU without having to make difficult decisions about what currency it uses for example; it also doesn’t have to apply to join other international organisations or sort out its foreign or defence policies. All those questions have already been answered.

Obviously, the same does not apply to Scotland – after voting for independence, it would be leaving a state rather than an organisation made up of states and would therefore have to make a lot of choices from scratch that the UK isn’t facing with Brexit. Scotland and rest of the UK also have shared assets (and debts) in a way that the UK and the EU don’t. All of this means, by definition, that Scotland leaving the UK would be more complicated than the UK leaving the EU, which, by extension, means the negotiations on independence could be even more hideous and confrontational than those on Brexit.

Except in one happy respect: the differences between the UK and the EU mean that there would, definitely, thankfully, be no equivalent to the backstop crisis if Scotland became independent because there isn’t a part of Scotland that would need to be treated differently in the way Northern Ireland does. Scotland, geographically and politically, would be leaving the UK as a single whole country. Therefore, no Scottish backstop required, to the considerable relief of everyone.

However, the absence of a backstop is not the same as an invisible border with England. Assuming Brexit goes ahead, the UK would be out of the single market and could restrict immigration from the EU. Equally, assuming Scotland joins the EU as an independent state, it would be following the four freedoms, including freedom of movement - therefore there would have to be checks at the Scottish border. Which leads to another of the lessons amid the chaos of Brexit: putting up barriers at borders is bad for the economy and the same would apply to Scotland.

The other clues from the Brexit process are just as troubling, particularly on how the negotiations might go. Part of the problem for Theresa May has been that the EU is bigger and more powerful than the UK so the EU states have been able to dominate the negotiations and the same could apply to Scottish independence – the UK would be the bigger party and could end up imposing a deal that’s bad for Scotland.

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And that’s before we come to the political divisions within Scotland itself. With Brexit, we’ve seen a minority government led by Mrs May that’s paralysed by the split between hard and soft Brexiters and is reliant on a small party, the DUP, to get a deal through. But Nicola Sturgeon could find herself in a similar situation, except that the divisions in her case would be between hard and soft nationalists arguing over how close to stay to the UK.

It’s also likely that, in trying to get any deal through Holyrood, the SNP would be reliant on a small party just as Mrs May is with the DUP, except that Mrs Sturgeon would be reliant on winning over hard nationalists in the Green party. The extreme Brexiters may have been the gremlins in the electrics of Brexit, but you can bet that, if the SNP ever won a referendum on independence, there would be a similar type of hard Scottish nationalist pushing for an absolute form of separation. And the “Jacob Rees-Mogg” in this situation, the ring-leader of the hard separatists, could be the leader of the Greens Patrick Harvie (this may be the first time Mr Harvie has been compared to the leader of the ERG but it amuses me to do it).

All of these clues point to a difficult time after a vote for Scottish independence, quite apart from the fact that the differences between the UK and the EU make another referendum dubious anyway – whatever Nicola Sturgeon and Keith Brown may have been hinting at over the weekend, the UK does not need permission to leave the EU, whereas Scotland has to get consent to leave the UK.

Brexit has also taught us what happens when referendums are won by a slim margin. The argument goes on. There’s bitterness and chaos. The losers in the referendum keep pushing for another vote. The divisions become deeper, and the wounds ooze more poison. This is precisely what has happened in the last two years over Brexit but take a close look at the chaos and you can see that it’s also what could happen to Scottish independence.