That comparison seems a bit off to me. The UK is more than 10x the size of all EEA members combined. The EEA exists / works because its members are largely peripheral. The UK by contrast is a regional superpower. On this basis alone - particularly when accounting for Brussels' massive bruised ego - it was always a bit unrealistic to expect a neat and tidy new EEA-style trade agreement between the UK and the EU.

Not only that, but a central theme in the runup to Brexit was improved border & immigration control. This is something which EEA members don't enjoy themselves, both via Schengen and the EEA's bilateral work permits. Hence, Brexit voters were sold a best-of-all-possible-worlds scenario where the UK would somehow manage to land an EEA style trade deal without literally any of its possible downsides. That seems optimistic to the point of naivete.

"The UK is more than 10x the size of all EEA members combined. The EEA exists / works because its members are largely peripheral."

My guess is that by EEA you refer to those members that are not already part of the EU, although technically the EEA includes both EU members and countries with a special agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area

Yeah, that's correct. In my experience 'EEA' is a well understood shorthand for 'non-EU EEA members', since that's the context under which 'EEA' is most often used.

Norway's path has been a steady path with largely rational smaller steps, mostly towards closer EU integration. The UK took a single, huge, unplanned step into the void without any rational debate or planning on what would come next.

People aren't laughing at the UK for leaving the EU per se. but for the insane and terribly thought out chain of blunders that led to them taking that leap.

Norway is in a special case by being substantially wealthier to the extent that Norway can basically buy its way out of most of the problems the UK has.

At the same time, through the EEA Norway is much closer associated to the EU than the Brexit crowd wants the UK to be. Including e.g. accepting Schengen which the UK didn't participate in even as a member of the EU.

Norway is part of the single market (including free movement of people) and benefits from it, so, what they did is completely different from what the UK is going to do. But, most importantly, it's much much more disruptive to first join and then pull out that not joining at all.

So basicaly Norway got itself the best possible deal: all benefits of EU membership without any of the downsides (e.g. common currency or political correctnes bullshit).

If anything, the UK had the best deal: they also don't have a common currency, and unlike Norway they didn't have mandatory open borders (Schengen). I have no idea what do you mean by the EU imposing political correctness, though.

This is not correct as far as I know. The Norwegian government wanted to join the EU because in the current state they have a lot of obligations to be allowed to the single market and they even have to pay a large sum for it but they get no say in it. Voting rights are limited to full EU members. They are getting a bad deal, just like the UK will, simply because the population does not want to join the EU.

I want also to point out that this would not have happened if Norway had been in the EU already in 2010 because China would not risk trade with all of the EU because of such a small incident.

It's the best possible deal only if you don't care that you don't have any democratic influence on all decisions involving the single market - you just need to accept all regulations as decided by member states. Which I guess is fine for Norway and Switzerland, but wouldn't suit every country. For sure it wouldn't suit the UK.