I'm sorry, I cannot and will not accept that - what it says is that there is only one macro-level political approach that is valid (the one that was taken), and that clearly is not the case.
The "Northern Hub" thing has in my view been a sop from start to finish and has addressed little or no real-world problems effectively. Just like HS2 north of Birmingham[1], the money spent on which would benefit provincial cities if it were instead spent on giving them all a German standard of fully integrated city transport system.
[1] I believe it is needed south of Birmingham to provide an additional 2 WCML fast lines to ease capacity. That capacity constraint is much less of an issue north of Birmingham and so the case is much weaker.
Its pretty obvious that you won't accept that from your continued refusal to consider any factors outside passenger numbers, or trivia such as the number of DMUs freed up, the distance passengers have to walk or whatever. Of course there are many valid macro-level approaches possible, however a smaller number that meet the targets set for a project and even fewer that meet them in an optimum manner.
The Northern Hub addressed its initial objective of attracting investment to increase capacity into and through Manchester within a realistic budget with the optimum business case (which also optimised the economic benefit to those of us living in the North). If the increase in southbound paths from Piccadilly and the doubling of capacity at Victoria doesn't address a real-world problem, I don't know what does.
Where are the facts and figures to back up your "view" that money would be better spent on a German standard of fully integrated transport? If you have any facts, figures, research etc that backs this up, I'd be very interested in seeing them, until then they remain your views or beliefs, lacking any proof. As
Ianno87 correctly says the business case for the full HS2 network including wider economic benefits is higher than Phase 1 alone, capacity constraints are only part of the overall picture so your assertion that the case is much weaker north of Birmingham is untrue.
Source: National Audit Office 2016 HS2 report
