It is sad that the level of education and public discourse in the U.K. is so low that there are so many people who have so many entrenched misconceptions about the EU and its workings.
The agreement that Norway (and Iceland) has with the EU is called the European Economic Area. The way this works is that Norway gets free movement with the EU and in return Norway agrees to implement ALL of the EU laws in relation to free movement. Note that Norway has NO decision-making on those laws once they are agreed by the EU Norway has to implement them just like any EU member. Note also that the relevant laws in relation to free movement are not just in relation to free trade in goods. They also cover free movement of persons and freedom to provide services, i.e. immigration, so those of you complain about EU immigrants like me who are paying for their council houses and tax credits (while ignoring the enormous amount of immigration into the U.K. from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) are not going to get what you want.
The agreement that Switzerland has with the EU (actually, a set of agreements) but essentially work in the same way and provide for free movement of persons - Swiss into EU countries and EU countries into Switzerland. There is one extra provision which allows Switzerland to TEMPORARILY limit the number of EU workers taking up jobs in Switzerland if Swiss unemployment increases by more than 10 percent in a year compared to the average rate in the previous three years. (News article on this here: euobserver.com/social/28100) However, that provision has never been used and would only apply temporarily.
The reasons that Switzerland, Norway and Iceland don't join the EU are in large part because they don't want to be part of the EU's agriculture (Switzerland and Norway) and fisheries (Iceland and Norway) rules.
The EU was willing to agree to the agreements with Norway, Iceland and Switzerland because they are not very large countries and, in the case of Switzerland, road/rail access across Switzerland and the Alps is important to Germany and Italy. However, the EU is not going to agree to free trade in goods or services without free movement of workers.
The unpalatable truth for English people is that the main driver of low skilled low paid immigration (which, in fact, is more from outside Europe than it is from the EU) is tax credits which significantly increase the income of those with children. It's no co-incidence that the rise in this sort of immigration into the U.K. followed from Labour introducing tax credits. The problem of course is that there are huge numbers of English people on these benefits and the EU doesn't let there be one rule for people just because they were born in England and a different rule for others because they were not. It's still remarkable to me that English living in London in council housing at way below market rents complain that they have to compete for work with eastern Europeans who are living in private rented accommodation paying much more in rent.
If England leaves the EU then business in London, which is massively subsidising the rest of the U.K., is going to be decimated. The same will be the case for every car manufacturing plan in the U.K. (auto manufacturing being bright spark in this rececession).
There's plenty wrong with the EU - it's sclerotic decision-making, the grossly overpaid Brussels bureaucrats, the excessive regulation, the has-been politicians. But I'm not sure that the civil servants in Whitehall are much better. However, if you're going to contribute to this debate at least inform yourself about it. Whinging that you want to leave the EU because you've never had a vote to stay in would be like a Scottish person saying that they want to leave the U.K. because they never voted to be part of it.