# 25. Political / organisational tricks ## 25.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ## 25.5.4. Moving the Middle These techniques aim to alter the perception of a policy, politician, person, or party by manipulating the perceived middle ground or mean position. Moving the middle tends to be used in times of economic difficulty when populations may become either more conservative or more radical. The centre may be misrepresented to alter the perception of what is considered "mainstream". It may involve excluding moderate views so as to politically move the "mainstream" position in a polarising way. It can also mean shifting the middle, which may be an incremental process taking place over the course of years to move a group, party, or nation to the political right or left. Shifting the middle may be the result of a series of compromises benefiting one particular group or ideology, or it may occur due to systematic propaganda. For example, the Labour Party in the UK under Tony Blair subtly moved its middle somewhere to the right of the Conservative party. In this planned process, the party, based as it was on traditional socialist principles, gradually compromised and purged itself of socialists until it became a fairly reactionary right-wing party called "New Labour". It retained very little connection with the ethical basis of "Old Labour". Finally, when his ruse was revealed Tony Blair and his cronies were virtually expelled from the party but the underhand manipulative dishonesty caused catastrophic political damage to the reputation and workings of an old and respected political party. The party will require years of recuperation to regain its place in the political consciousness of Britain. Worse still, the actions of Blair severely undermined public interest in party politics since political parties are, at the time of writing, perceived by much of the general public to be "all the same", with nothing to distinguish between Labour, Liberal-Democratic and Conservative parties- except their names.