That’s a very problematic perspective Tony.
People that see their politics as ‘in the middle’ often think of right and left as ‘ideological’ but themselves as ‘practical’ (or similar self-descriptions like ‘a-political’ ‘balanced’ ‘pragmatic’ ‘common sense’ etc). But when you look at history (evidence of how people thought, not just events, etc) you find that this ‘centre’ is just as shifting ground as left and right. It is indeed in some ways even more dangerous ground, because it doesn’t see itself as just another ideological perspective.
This is the key to understanding the problem with the BBC version of ‘balance’ – it sees two sides to a question and assumes the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But as the old saying goes: if a decent journalist wants to know whether it’s raining, they don’t ask for a range of opinions, they go outside and see if they get wet.
In most theories of ideology, in fact, the ‘centre-ground’ is seen as the most ideological, because it accepts, is locked inside current norms of thought and behaviour, what passes for current ‘common sense’. When slavery was the norm, centrists believed in a more humane version of slavery; when women had no votes, centrists believed in universal male suffrage; before gay liberation, they thought homosexuality was ‘queer’ – etc, etc. Only now, with their 20-20 hindsight, can centrists see that in fact the left-activists of past times were perfectly correct (but, mysteriously, they still see today’s left as wrong!)
It is in our own time a particularly dangerous ideology, because it’s basic proposition (ie. things are not too bad, there’s not really any alternative to capitalism, it would be nice to make life more comfortable for everyone but there’s not much we can do) is not adequate to the scale of the climate/ecological crisis we are facing. This is where, now, the ‘balanced’ view hits the rock of the truth – which (unfortunately for centrists) doesn’t lie anywhere near the middle-ground.
The political formation in ‘the west’ today is pretty much this: almost every expert that actually understands what is happening to the planet, and people on the left, versus a centre that doesn’t deny the science but doesn’t think anything much can be done, or can’t be bothered, and a right that (as always) denies the science, or doesn’t care.