It's difficult for anybody to give a proper analysis of Premjet's chances of success. There are however, many hundreds of thousands of people, some with second homes in Spain and France for whom 'economic uncertainty' and the 'credit crunch' mean nothing at all.
Roverman's thoughts on LCCs and the North of England are interesting, but I disagree that the growth of LCCs have rendered MAN a less viable hub. The old legacy carriers are still here, with the exception of IB and OS which didn't link MAN with MAD and VIE for very long, other second-tier European airports have largely lost their hub status (BRU, MXP, GVA and even to a certain extent ZRH and CPH) in the same time period. We have to compare MAN with these and with BER, BCN, and ARN and we're still not doing too badly.
I think the pull of LHR and BA is still too great. It's not surprising that CX pulled out given the number of available connections on BA/CX and VS, but still, we now have 4 daily departures in that general direction by Gulf carriers, 5 if you include SQ, 7 or 8 if you add ED and PK, which is pretty darn good for a non-capital, non-hubbing 'regional' European airport.