As a former employee of another former BA franchise airline, the above arguments are familiar to me.
Of course GB would not be as successful as they are now without the strength of the BA brand. This is/was true of all the franchise partners.
However, they do clearly demonstrate that it is possible to make money out of short-haul at LGW.....something many in Waterside, with head in sand, refuse to believe, yet continue to accept some of the ludicrous overheads associated with their own SH operation.
The GB operation is, of course, mutually beneficial. BA obtain their franchise fee, and other fees for provision of the many other services (reservations, yield control, etc.) plus a proportion of each seat sold, and also feed onto the BA longhaul network.....drastically diminished at LGW in recent years but nonetheless a key strength. If BA were to operate such feed routes themselves it would invariably be at a loss.
I am not blaming the flying community for BA's woes.......BA need to tackle head-office and ground-based costs. However, there are still, I'm afraid, many BA pilots with a "job for life" mentality who continue to ignore the harsh reality of what's going on outside their cockpit window.......the fact that the apron at LGW is progressively turning Orange. As someone commented previously, "wake up and smell the coffee" and recognise that GB at LGW could be the saviours of a BA presence, rather than the enemy.