"None of what you try to hang on Orwell actually hangs. The British working class was and is passive. Orwell did not put himself or other middle class intellectuals above working class intellectuals. He merely noted, correctly, that workers tend not to have the time and resources to think it all the way through. "British socialism" has never existed, so any "portrait" of it would be fiction."
Very true. I'll never forget the scene in Homage to Catalonia in which opposing sides are trying to get each other to defect by showing off about the quality of their rations.
Because he tried to understand reality, rather than pursue the logic of an idea, he has a lot of valuable things to say. He can actually explain the "truth" and appeal of Kipling or of Henry Miller, while most true socialist ideologues can do nothing more than to dismiss them.
Joanna