The richest country in Europe is Switzerland....

Nope, just look at the history of the place. Free from fighting or being attacked and independently dealing with Germany during WWII. 

... and yet it still isn't a member of the EU and shows that European life outside the EU is anything but Armageddon. 

Not sure it is factually incorrect.


Let's rephrase it though on a point of semantics; Switzerland is considered by some to be one of the richest nations, if not the richest nation in Europe, despite not being a member of the EU. 

This is the sort of simplistic idea that leads our MPs to think that they can simply join the Single Market and that will get us free trade. It will, but it comes with a lot of "baggage". It combines free movement of goods, capital, services, and people, known collectively as the "four freedoms".  Whereas a bilateral deal simply gives you the ability to trade goods tariff free. That's all the UK people signed up to when we joined the Common Market - the rest of the nonsense was added by our government without any permission from the electorate.

Switzerland is NOT in the Single Market. You can tell that it's not in the SM because it trades via bilateral deals which don't involve FoM or blanket alignment with EU regulations. Most international trade is done via bilateral deals, either WTO or bespoke. That's what we should have negotiated when we left the EU. Switzerland has a better deal than we have. 

The problem is that most people - including our MPs - don't know what the EU is, or even what the single market and customs union are. That's why we get shafted whenever we get into negotiations with the EU Commission. They run rings round our negotiators. 

SWitzerland's relationship with the EU is entirely made up of bespoke agreements for trade and various other things. It is not in the Single Market. If you want to look at it in a simplistic way you could say it has "access to the SM" but that confuses the SM with simply a trading agreement - which is not what it is. If Switzerland had wanted to be in the SM they would have voted yes to the referendum about joining the EEA - but they rejected it.

That's what you say.  What everyone else says is that Switzerland is part of the Single Market. EEA countries are part of the Single Market, for that matter.  

The UK has access to the Single Market via its FTA with the EU.  Switzerland is part of the Single Market via its bilateral treaties.  The difference is that the UK does not pay the EU anything; the UK does not follow EU standards; the UK does not allow FOM; the UK does not follow EU rules.  Switzerland does all those things.

EU Single Market is all about freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and people.  And Switzerland voted in September 2020 to retain FOM for EU citizens.  Go figure!

We both agree on the substance -- Switzerland pays the EU; Switzerland follows EU standards; implements FoM; but you can't seem to get it into your head that those are the criteria for being part of the Single Market.  Why and how can you not just give an article, an excerpt from an article, a government publication -- whatever -- that says categorically that Switzerland is not part of the Single Market? 

That's just nonsense. You don't become part of the SM via bilateral treaties. Bilateral treaties on trade remove the need for joining the SM. You're totally confused. Like I said before google is bad way of trying to find information about a subject you don't know anything about. And EEA countries are in the SM - that's what the EEA is. You sign up to it and the SM comes as part of the package. That's what Switzerland didn't want. That's why they spent many years negotiating bespoke bilateral deals. They could have joined the EEA just by signing up.

I suggest you stop posting crap and do some reading.