1. If the plan is to pitch East Coast trains at the "budget" end of the market then why would you want to taint your "full price" TPE/HT brands with this attempt at a rail-based answer to EasyJet?
2. Every time there's a franchise change, people on here seem to fall over themselves with suggestions for co-operation that never results in anything serious - e.g. First getting SWR next to GWR - first the "competition" concerns, second the "hey, this would allow Service X to be merged with Service Y" kind of ideas - I'm not saying there won't be any co-operation but I'd imagine it'd be closer to the way that EMT and VTEC very occasionally lent/borrowed HSTs to help out, rather than the kind of things suggested at a "passenger" level (sharing an office may happen for back room stuff, but it'd have to be with an eye on the fact that the TPE will finish in around three years, so you can't guarantee any long term things.
Surly, correct me if im wrong, there would have to be a good enough reason NOT to extend an OAO when they are deemed to be doing so well. Examply GC being one of the top companies coming out of the passangers survey
3. An Open Access operation doing well at the customer satisfaction surveys is a bit like Merseyrail being the most punctual TOC - I don't mean to criticise good news but the operator with the highest satisfaction will generally be a leisure operation with few daily commuters, one that people have chosen to travel with rather than being forced to travel to work on hundreds of times a year (just like, all things being equal, the most punctual TOC ought to be either C2C or Merseyrail which are short/ self contained/ operate a fairly simple fleet/ can control their own timetables - these kind of trains crammed with stressed commuters may not be as "satisfied" as people having a jaunt down to That London but these are wholly different metrics!)