It sounds like this guy buttered much of the book he was trying to write. But what’s interesting nonetheless is the extent to which the substance of arguments matters less than the label attached to those making the arguments. If this reviewer is being fair then Scott Lucas’s criticism of Orwell is that his arguments against socialists weren’t wrong on the merits, they were wrong because Orwell was “secretly” a conservative. It’s as if Orwell would be wrong that two plus two is four if historians could find his secret conservative movement membership card.