Partisan types no doubt.... Here's something else for you, from the foreword to his 2000 collection of essays (have you read the book, or do you just throw around snap judgements based on vague recollections of Brian Lamb?): "The essays in these ensuing pages were all written in the last decade of the twentieth century; between the marvellous humbling of the Ogre [the collapse of the Soviet Empire-pk] and the onset of fresh discontents [a rare reference to the '99 Seattle protests?-pk]... ... Another and more blunt way of stating my own ambition is to recall Orwell's desire to 'make political writing into an art'. Sometimes, and less strenuously, I have attempted to show how some artists have almost involuntarily committed great political writing.
The intersection where this occurs is an occasion of paradox, or of epigram and aphorism. One still pays attention when Wilde says that socialism, properly considered, would free us of the distress and tedium of living for others. And one lends an ear when Orwell - so crassly termed a 'saint' by V.S. Pritchett - announces that saints must always be adjudged guilty until proven innocent...."
doesn't seem very post-partisan or anti-socialist.
Peter