Yes it was. Maybe not too late to fix it, and I hope they do.
The mood in the EU is that after Hungary, we don't need Eurosceptic nations polluting the Union from the inside. There'd have to be a groundswell movement far larger than the original Brexit movement, and I simply don't see that happening.
The fundamental issues of why Brexit happened have to be addressed first, and the British people simply don't want that.
Examples: 'We get our special deals back'. That was negotiated from inside the EU, with the leverage to leave or abuse the veto they held. That leverage is gone.
'We won't join the Euro'. That was a special opt out, also negotiated from inside the EU.
Of course Britain wants to have its cake and eat it. We all do, but it's about leverage, and the UK has exhausted its leverage. Better that the EU and UK remain close allies but forge different paths. It's clear the UK doesn't want to pay the cost of EU membership.
It doesn't really matter what the bulk of British people think they want if the elites can spend a few million turning swing voters against their own interests, and that's fundamentally what needs to be addressed.
There's no campaign asking for that; we understood it would be gone before we even left, and it was a key part of the Remain position that we were squandering a unique position within Europe.
We will, I think, never rejoin the EU as it is currently constituted; it is better off without us. If it can retain its current unity — which is by no means a given — then we will be on the outside of it forever.
You have your own issues and I do not believe that euroskepticism in continental Europe is gone, though I do think the Hungary transition shows that the Trump administration's deliberate, right wing bigot meddling is having less of an effect that they would like. Not that it is the only reason you have a surging xenophobic far right.
We in the UK have to fend that off a different way; Trump and that evil shit JD Vance present a different threat and we have other levers we must pull, and if we were in the EU at the moment the USA would only be using our tensions with the EU against everyone; without it they have much less power to stoke nationalist fires.
So for the next few years at least I think the campaign to rejoin should be on pause.
Sure, nobody is campaigning to rejoin with the old priviliges and opt-outs, but that's because nobody sees how to rejoin with the old priviliges and opt-outs, nor do they see a path to convincing UK voters to rejoin with a worse deal than they used to have.
Hence, all the british politicians who think Brexit was a mistake are just sitting on their hands, and not making any effort to even start a rejoin campaign.
You appear to tacitly accept this premise when you say
> "If it can retain its current unity — which is by no means a given — then we will be on the outside of it forever."
I was just observing that if that is a consensus on the continent — that we're going to be begging to be let back in on the old terms — it is people spinning a yarn for their own reasons. Because it isn't a correct characterisation.
Even the Leave voters have had long enough to realise that what Remain campaigners were saying about the structural advantages of membership and the speed of recovering any comparative position are true. Brexit-means-Brexit types all seem to project success into the future long enough that the only people who will call them on it will be nursing home carers.
You are right that there is no pathway to rejoin that isn't a humiliation. And the longer we wait, the more people forget what we had. Hence Reform and Restore can rage about a worsened border situation that their own politicians actually created; their voters have forgotten that Brexit made it worse.