‘Rejoiners’ – who want Britain to once again be a part of the EU – took to the streets of London this weekend. It was a sorry sight. ‘We want our star back,’ the protesters yelled, as they waved EU flags and donned Brussels-branded berets. But who do they think they are actually persuading to change their mind?

I think Brexit was a grave mistake and I hope to one day see the United Kingdom enter back into the fold. But the plain truth is that continuity Remain – those campaigners who want the democratic result reversed – are doing the hard work for Brexiteers. It sometimes feels like the best case for staying out of the EU is made by the ‘Rejoiner’ campaign groups themselves.

Too many of those in the pro-EU campaigning bubble appear to have a deep inability to learn from any of the mistakes they’ve made – which are many and counting – or to even try and think clearly and rationally about achieving their goals. They seem to design things like this past weekend’s protest march in London around strengthening the cosy little world they have ensconced themselves in since they lost the referendum.

Looking at the footage of the protest, even I suddenly felt a twinge of Euroscepticism

The way the Leave and Remain campaigns were run in 2016 and the result of the referendum should have been more than enough to burst this bubble. The Leave campaign was one of the most impressive political campaigns ever run, anywhere in the world; the Remain campaign was a shambles, a rolling mess headed by New Labour nepo babies. Leave winning the referendum should have been all the wake-up call that was required; instead, we’ve had to watch the same group of people make the same mistakes, over and over and over again.

Take the speaker line up at this weekend’s Rejoiner march: Guy Verhofstadt, Gina Miller and Femi. Did I just dream the last five years happened and I’ve woken up and it’s still 2017? Verhofstadt is a Eurofederalist; he wants to create a United States of Europe. Given this is the main thing any ‘Re-join’ campaign would wish to heavily play down, why have the EU parliament’s main Eurofederalist speak at your UK re-join campaign rally? It’s like there was no thought given whatsoever to the audience they wanted to reach or the people they need to convince.

Could they not have asked Ken Clarke to speak? Or Michael Heseltine? Or David Gauke? No. The ‘Rejoin’ campaigning groups seem allergic to Tories, even though they desperately need Conservatives to embrace their cause if it is to have any chance of succeeding. Some demonstrators have been complaining on social media about the mainstream media mostly not covering the march, but what did they expect? How interesting did they think Gina Miller giving the same speech she’s given a hundred times since 2017 was going to be for an audience that mostly doesn’t care about Brexit either way any longer?

If the ‘Rejoiners’ want media attention, here’s a suggestion: they should work harder to secure a noted Brexiter and use the march as the moment for them to announce their conversion. Imagine that the march organisers told the press beforehand that they had a big name speaker who had worked on the Leave campaign, and that said prominent Brexiteer was going to be announcing that they were now anti-Brexit, live on stage. Then, on the day of the march, a prominent Brexiteer would have come out and said they were wrong about Brexit and we should now all get together to try and re-join the EU.

That would have got picked up by the national press for certain.

Instead, this past weekend’s march will mostly be remembered for one thing only: a group of people dressed in EU flag berets and blue and yellow costumes doing interpretive dance to John Lennon’s ‘Power to the People’. If I was trying to concoct a more negative image for ‘Rejoin’ to have attached to it, I would struggle to think of anything worse. It’s like the march was there to try and really drive home the idea that re-joining the EU is only of concern to a small group of mostly older liberals in the Home Counties, well-off enough to spend time sewing together EU-themed superhero costumes. Looking at the footage, even I suddenly felt a twinge of Euroscepticism.

Despite these scenes, I remain a ‘Rejoiner’. I feel like Brexit was a mistake, one that I would like to see reversed in my lifetime. But the pro-EU groups don’t make it half hard to continue saying that out loud. The thing that might keep us out of the European Union for a long time, more than anything else, is the continued ineptitude of pro-European campaigners. Brexiteers should thank their lucky stars.