Actually the airports commision came the conclusion that it was the hub business model that made Heathrow the winner as Gatwick could not come close to delivering the economic benefits. That was the fundamental heart of the decision, to suggest the debate was a simple matter of additional runway capacity is wilfully wrong.
The Manchester Crowd really do love to be selective in when hub and spoke is a good thing offering connections i.e MAN and flybe feeding TCX, the ME3, VS building a hub. This is a good hub because it's their local hub. A bad hub is one in another part of the country which may impact the rate of growth at MAN.