Funny how that happens. Some co-incidence would you say Skipness?
As I alluded to they tried everything to make it work, to save face, then just lost the will to continue pushing it. Terminal 5 was given the green light twenty years late and LHR became a delayed focus as the shameful neglect there was addressed belatedly. Bare in mind the LHR airlines had been angered by substantial capital investment being focussed on STN when they were paying serious money to LHR and seeing facilities fall into neglect. STN was the major focus after Terminal 4 and later the North Terminal at Gatwick opened.
MAG can do all sorts of things to get traffic in, BAA got Continental, Lufthansa, SAS, American Airlines (twice) but all were unsustainable. Right now MAG are getting the traffic back up, I genuinely hope they succeed where BAA failed. It's re-writing history to suggest they didn't try very hard though.