If we live outside of the South East then we are 2nd class citizens but at least the illegal immigrants do not know of nor wish to come to the Midland shires.
British Airways are also equally London biased, in Germany Lufthansa operate long hall from both Frankfurt and Munich. BA could have developed longhaul from Manchester in the 90's/00's but they lacked real foresight and retreated to Heathrow instead.
Not sure it has much to do with foresight. The MUC/FRA arguement doesn't stack up as MUC is way further away and the German economy is much more spread out geographically, not so much skewed into one area. Airlines serve markets, by and large they don't generate them. BA retreated to LHR because it was the only place BA as acompany could make money at an acceptable level. The LGW hub was a failure year after year, losses were immense due to duplication of short haul feed across LHR/LGW and the loss of global feed as some long haul was split across LHR and LGW.
As for MAN, losses on regional short haul were eye-watering once EZY and FR came along and did the same job for way less, regional flying went loco. That would have left MAN with standalone long haul with no feed competing with US carriers and ME3 who have major hubs at the other end. VERY hard to make money.
If MAN was more like MUC, then fair point, alas it's wayyy to close to the SE for that analogy to work sadly. Believe me, it's not like BA then BMI didn't try. VS succeed, perhaps because they have lower costs and are much more leisure focused. Whether BA could replicate the success VS have with DL on their JV with AA, I suspect that boat has sailed.