For the reference, 2017 was the year of GHC 8.0. Since your decision to never look back there were a lot of good things.

The standard didn't come out because of some failure to make it. It was mostly the lack of interest that killed it. I wouldn't be betting that some alternative universe where Haskell Prime pulled through had a noticeable increase of adoption because of this.

Looking at proposals, arguments "from standard" don't tend to generate enough support. What wins hearts is alleviating someone's pain without taking disproportionate externalities.