I think you are all playing the blame game here. The reality is: passengers are missing at MME. Compared with the top year 2006 with 917,963 passengers, only 190,284 passengers flew in 2011 at Durham Tees Valley. That equals to only 20.7% of 2006 level.
A consolation can be that this is an east England problem - negative growth starts in the south at Stansted and ends in the north at Newcastle with the only exception being East Midlands (EMA).
Souce passenger numbers: UK CAA