This has been part of the problem with the overall debate. It's not that what I said was "intellectual" or "eloquent", but rather that it put forward a series of arguments which pointed me towards voting to leave. You, along with many remainers I've had discussions with, really don't seem to be interested in what people who voted to leave actually think, but are happy to fit what they say into a convenient box with a label on it. My box appears to be the "Little Englander" box, as I'm simply someone who doesn't want to be told what to do by Johnny Foreigner.
As for my view on a federal Europe (per your comment: "What's wrong with a 'United States of Europe'?"), this is that it simply won't work. Supranational entities never do and I have the entire human history from which to draw evidence. Perhaps the most telling examples are recent European ones, from the late 20th century; The USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The first two are perhaps unsurprising, held together as they were by communist tyranny, but the break-up of Czechoslovakia just illustrates how fragile these things are. The Czechs and Slovaks actually like each other and yet they STILL wanted a separate existence for largely historical reasons. Even today, two EU member states are close to breaking up, namely the UK and Spain. The UK and the Kingdom of Spain are relatively recent amalgamations of countries that existed independently for centuries before unification and both have significant independence movements in their constituent parts. How then do you expect an amalgamated EU to hold together when you're talking about 27 widely different nations in terms of history, culture and economies? It's just madness to me and begs a complete re-think of what the EU is all about...