Companies always find an excuse not to do the right and often harder thing. Cut don;t grow , etc and modern managers can seldom look beyond this . The execs see their tenure as a few short years so preserving the values of the brand is of no interest to them compared to quarterly 'numbers'.
I dont mind BoB on short haul except that it should be the law that each pax gets a free bottle of water not the recycled toxic version in the tanks. For many in the London area choice is determined by airport and location for me its LHR 1 LGW 2 and STN never since it takes longer to get to the airport than the flight. Also FF miles can be a big issue for regular company travellers .
But BA are damaging their brand , they do well across the pond and are every popular for US travellers, if they stat to look like UA or AA well America first will kick in and there is no way back from these changes once they are made.
I think BA face a real challenge from EZY in Europe but if they are clever they can sue the enormous advantage of interlining pax at LHR to bump up the SH revenues BUT for years they have palyed that game the other way around by giving most of the connecting sector to LH and whining about SH losses so that needs a change of focus.
Also I think WW has had his time, a bit like Arsene Wenger at Arsenal he did agood job but he doesnt bring much value to the airline now and he should move on taking the current lo-rent BA boss with him and getting a more marketing /service focussed guy running BA and someone with a bit more ambition ( meaning for the airline not personal ambition) as the IAG head