Wrote the below off-list to someone:
I would have said much the same (Popper as more of a libertarian). I think perhaps those on the Marxist Left find his antagonism towards their guru the equivalent of a conservative position? Between Marxism and conservatism are a wide range of others, including old-fashioned liberalism. I mean, there is indeed a direct line linking Popper to Soros’s politics, isn’t there? In the linked piece, Eagleton himself differentiates between Burkean conservatism and the “unpolitical” (what one might call “knee jerk” in the USA) attitude he attributes to Naipaul: a "distaste for the political in favor of the customary, instinctual, and spontaneous.”.
—ravi