Given the rush of publicity on the EU referendum during the week, mainly centred on the Prime Minister's intervention over the Norway Option, one might have thought that the Sunday newspapers would follow through and develop the story. Instead, referendum coverage has been relatively light.
On reflection, this should not be a surprise. The legacy media has, almost without exception, imbibed Mr Cameron's lies intact. Without the wherewithal to challenge his claims, and lacking any understanding of the issues raised, the journalists have little more to say. We have, in effect, an ignorance-induced news vacuum.
It is thus left to the growing band of bloggers to continue the debate, with particularly good contributions from
The Brexit Door and
White Wednesday, of a quality and depth that the legacy media could not even begin to match.
Lost Leonardo is also stoking the debate,and
The Boiling Frog's piece is still
on the table, so there is plenty of meat to keep the discussion going.
But what are also emerging from the Cameron intervention are questions as to his motivation. Bizarrely, Dominic Cummings thinks the Prime Minister was goading "leavers" in to supporting the Norway Option, which
he regards as "a suboptimal fixed fortification". That, Cummings believes, is very bad strategy.
As a late comer to the EU debate, however â having been out of it for many years â Cummings is perhaps looking at the Prime Minister's intervention in isolation, not appreciating that the Norway Option has been a target for a considerable time, long before he belatedly climbed back into the ring.
Mr Cameron even made an attack on Norway a prominent part of his 2013
Bloomberg speech, in which he announced his commitment to a referendum. That alone seem to suggest that he had something more in mind than Mr Cummings.
In fact, the Norway Option, as it stands, represents one of the most credible ways of securing a swift, trouble-free exit from the EU. Used partly as a halfway house for countries seeking to join the EU, it is equally valid as a halfway house for the likes of the UK, which are aiming to leave.
It is this function as a halfway house â an interim option - that makes it so dangerous to the "remainers". His failure to recognise this illustrates Cummings's almost total lack of strategic acumen. Far from being a "fixed fortification", the EEA is simply the most accessible route to achieving full single market participation after we have left the EU, buying time for us to fashion a longer-term solution. This is not "fixed". It is a dynamic solution to a complex, dynamic problem.
That alone is an extremely good reason why Mr Cameron should want to be rid of the Norway Option, and one has to ask why, if the option is as bad as he makes out, it was necessary to tell so many lies, exaggerating the payments and the laws adopted, and underestimating the influence.
But there is more to it than that. As we have seen from the Bertelsmann/Spinelli
Fundamantal Law, there is a proposal extant to wind up the EEA and bring in the EFTA states, together with Switzerland, into the maw of associate membership.
Should the UK pre-empt this move and join EFTA, this trading association would become the fourth largest trading bloc in the world, after the EU, the United States and China. As such, the members would be significantly more powerful, and able to deal with the EU and other partners - becoming more reluctant to accept the second class status of associate membership.
Clearly, a more powerful EFTA would not be a desirable outcome, either to the EU or British Europhiles. Neither would it be a happy development for the Europhile political élite in Norway. Demolishing the case for Norway, therefore, would seem to be an essential part of Mr Cameron's strategy â and very much in the broader interest of the EU.
The removal of the Norway Option also has the merit â from the Europhile perspective â of narrowing down the alternatives available to the "leavers", who are being led by the nose into the trap of advocating the unachievable "bespoke" free trade agreement (FTA).
Already, the "remainers" have had
Global Counsel doing the work to support the claim that "the path to Brexit - and beyond - would be long and uncertain, taking ten years or more.
This ticking time-bomb sits dormant, ready to explode in the faces of Dominic Cummings and all the rest who are pushing the idea of an open-ended FTA. With all their eggs in one basket, the relatively simple destruction of their fantasy will render the "leavers" impotent, with nowhere to go.
For these reasons, the Norway Option must be kept on the table. It is the height of madness to close down your options at this stage in the campaign and utterly crass to allow your opposition to do this for you, as has
Vote Leave Ltd.
Fortunately, neither Vote Leave Ltd nor Leave.eu (and nor even Ukip) constitutes the totality of the "leave" campaign. There are enough to keep the Norway Option flame burning and, despite the best efforts of both sides of the divide â with the complicity of the legacy media , it is very far from extinct.
