All-The-Nines
That's very true but it can be done. For me it's a case if "Love Stansted but hate BAA". My personal experience is that Stansted's a much nicer airport than Gatwick in terms of the infrastructure. It has a modern, airy and spacious terminal building whilst Gatwick's old, busy and is too artificially lit and heated (especially the South terminal). There isn't really anything that's a massive wow factor at Gatwick when compared to Stansted.
Alot of the old carriers of Stansted like Norwegian or Blue Air who moved to Luton have all moved for financial reasons. Norwegian did however say they moved due to better connection to central London from Gatwick, but I fail to beleive that was really the reason since the extra 15 minutes saved using the Gatwick express would have been used up flying further down the UK from Scandinavia to Gatwick (and indeed more added by laning at a bigger airport, increasinf taxiing times and turnarounds).
I think in time, after the new owners have settled in and recovered the mess that BAA have made at Stansted, you will start to see some of Stansted's old airlines such as Transavia who now dont fly to the UK at all anymore and indeed some brand new ones at Stansted. Ryanair will always dominate, but some airlines have a very different way of operating/have destinations that Ryanair can't/won't use so are not really much competition to them. A bit like the situation with Atlasjet or Pegasus in Stansted, Ryanair causes very little harm to them.
Remember Gatwick actually now has more EasyJet flights than Ryanair has from Stansted, it's just that Gatwick is much less dependent on EasyJet because it's much bigger and has more airlines than Stansted. Therefore, the amount of Ryanair's at Stansted shouldn't be too much of a problem to airlines who are now at Gatwick since they are used to the same type of thing with EasyJet at Gatwick!