the EU currently has existing trade agreements with 52 countries;
the EU is also negotiating agreements with another 72 countries;
post-Brexit, the UK would therefore need to re-negotiate or start new bilateral negotiations on 124 trade agreements, plus one additional trade agreement re-defining its own trade status as a third country vis-à-vis the EU;
in theory 124 trade agreements x 5 years each = 620 years;
hypothetically, all 124 could be negotiated within 5 years (if negotiated in parallel);
how many trade negotiators does the UK need to resource this?
the EU (who have a battle hardened cadre of 550+ trade negotiators), typically sends 20 commission negotiators to any round of trade talks, backed up by between 25 and 40 technical experts;
before the BREXIT vote in in 2016 the UK had no trade negotiators;
assuming that each UK negotiating team will include at least around 25 negotiators (plus technical experts), 124 x 25 = 3,100 negotiators; and
how many trade deals does Britain have the manpower to negotiate over the next 10 years? - I do not know the answer but if it takes 25 per deal/e.g. 5 years and we have e.g. 50, then that = 2+. If we had 550 it would still only = 44 deals by 2040, i.e. 35% of what is required to catch up with the EU in 2019 (not 2040)!
Not sure if this has been posted already?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/suspending-article-50-diplomatic-exchange-notes-carl-islam/