I do agree with your reasoning - simply accepting the free market without a social agenda is not acceptable in the 21st century but a lot of people don't care for words like market, economy, social agenda. You have to prove that they are better off inside the EU than outside, the elite don't need convincing but most people do. I think too many federalists, even with best intent, monopolise the EU apparatus to push their agenda too fast for the rest to follow. They exploit the fact that we need common market rules to take over control of foreign and defense policies for example.
I agree in principle, that the pace needs to be controlled, but without our seat in the EU parliament, it may well proceed in a direction we find very much to our disadvantage.
As Churchill pointed out at the time of Dunkirk
"Wars are not won by evacuations"
To which I would add in my far simpler words
"Neither is a better future"
This is particularly true when one considers that most people actually have no records of their own family history further than perhaps two generations, and actually are unaware of much of this nation's history of repressing not only it's enemies, but it's "own" people.
And who are they, when you get down to it? how many can claim to be anything other than Migrants?
look at my own example.
Male side traces back to a Spanish shipwrecked sailor in the Armada that ended up in Scotland and married into the Bell Clan, and took the name, so on that side I am Spanish and Scots, the woman he married had been captured in a raid, lord knows from where!
The Bells were Border Rievers and not the sort of people you would want to meet on a dark night, of for that matter on a sunny summer day.
The Maternal side traces to Danish ancestors from the days of the Vikings.
So despite the time scale, I'm of immigrant stock too!
And the supreme irony now is that due to the disparity of the Birth rate, people who can be classified not to much as "Native British" but more accurately "Early arrivals/Invaders" will be outnumbered by an ethnic mix that has a Muslim religion as the only common factor.
Within a single generation.
And we had better find a way to live with that change!
With the current isolationist view being in the majority the signs are far from encouraging.