Orwell's place in the firmament of political discourse has never been in doubt, though which particular ideological constellation shows his luminosity to best effect remains debatable. Writers on Orwell, said Bernard Crick, who wrote the first detailed biography of Orwell, always claim the writer as one of their own. In fact, there was no problem: it was perfectly clear that Orwell was actually a Tribunite socialist pure and simple, just like Crick himself. That John Newsinger clearly recognizes Orwell as a fellow left-wing socialist is clear from the book's title, but this is no obstacle to the emergence of a clear-sighted and copiously referenced account of the many eccentricities and contradictions in Orwell's short career. Newsinger's adds greatly to our knowledge of the development of Orwell's relationship to left-wing groups in Britain, especially the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party, as well as to the Labour Party itself, particularly after it assumed government in 1945. Newsinger's approach is thematic rather than chronological. He begins with Orwell's trip to the north of England in 1936 and his discovery of that alien tribe the British working class, whose value system he comes to equate with what he takes to be genuine or democratic socialism, as opposed to ethical socialism (about which neither Orwell, nor Newsinger has much to say) or communism and scientific socialism. Newsinger pursues Orwell to Barcelona where, attached to the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) militia, he declared that he had gone to Spain to fight for decency and against fascism. He returned wounded in body and spirit, disillusioned by the internecine struggles on the anti-fascist side. What was undiminished, indeed enhanced, was his faith in democratic socialism, in which, as he told Cyril Connolly, he now “believed”, as he never had before. Orwell was not a man to use words loosely: belief has a quasi-religious connotation and it comes as no surprise to find that over ten years later Winston Smith, the last human being in Oceania, can also say, before his mind is destroyed, that only the proletariat possesses a value system capable of standing against totalitarianism: if there is any hope, says Winston, it lies in the proles. Yet, the proles he observes in Airstrip One live entirely apart from politics and it isn't easy to imagine their lives shaped by any communal value system or as offering any potential for revolutionary agency. Placing one's hope in them seems both a “mystical truth and a palpable absurdity”. This is what Orwell meant by “belief”.

Newsinger goes on to provide a careful account of the politics of the left in the 1930s. His analysis of the massive shifts in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and their effects on domestic parties in the West is sharp and instructive, and, finally, we come to the effect that the in-fighting had upon Orwell himself. Communism had become a counter-revolutionary force, he believed, and democratic socialists needed to be told. His own response was to espouse pacifism and join the Independent Labour Party (ILP), but even here he found no escape from the internecine struggles that bedevilled the Left generally. When, finally, war came, Orwell completed a volte-face as profound as any twist in Soviet foreign policy, he turned from pacifist to patriot, attacking his former allies, the “boiled rabbits” who clung to pacifism. Newsinger examines Orwell's relationship to fascism and shows how Orwell's attitude matured from the early days of the Spanish Civil War, when he was chiefly concerned to “have a ‘whack’ at Franco” and fascism, towards a realization that the Nazi and Soviet regimes seemed to be moving to a common form of “oligarchical collectivism”. Orwell took consolation from his belief that the working class would stand against the “might is right” philosophy of these new politics, referring specifically, as Newsinger shows, to Charlie Chaplin's impersonation of Hitler in The Great Dictator and the response he got from his working-class audience. Newsinger finishes this chapter with a strong rebuke to Orwell over his sometimes ambivalent attitude to anti-Semitism and to the fact that the Holocaust “never became a central concern” for him. Tosco Fyvel, who took over from Orwell as literary editor of Tribune, a friend of Orwells and a Jew, was outraged by the latter's coolness.

Newsinger now pursues the theme of pacifism and Orwell's hope, set out in The Lion and the Unicorn, that, as the government took greater control of society and the war economy, a form of socialism would emerge that would magically capture the essence of “Englishness”. This was Orwell's patriotic contribution to war propaganda, but it also captures the essence of what he wanted to believe. However, as the war progressed, he became increasingly pessimistic, clutching at straws, such as Stafford Cripps seizing control of the government and forcing through radical social change. It is in The Lion and the Unicorn that Orwell comes closest to explaining what his socialism would look like if implemented. Unoriginal and short of detail, it hardly amounts to a manifesto. Newsinger is more supportive of this programme than it really merits. In 1945, with the end of the war, Clement Attlee won a landslide electoral victory and, for the first time in British history, a Labour government took office with a handsome majority. Orwell is pictured as underwhelmed by the government's legislative achievements. He had always believed that the party's radical potential was constrained by its financial dependence on the unions and their stake in the success of the capitalist economy and he was further saddened that the government didn't make symbolic changes, like abolishing the House of Lords and the public (i.e. private) schools. Before long, however, Orwell seemed to move toward, possibly even beyond the government, supporting its right, should it take it, to break strikes for example, and even make use of forced labour “for the dirtier kinds of work”, should the government think it necessary.

The final substantive chapters deal with the linked themes of security and surveillance and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Newsinger begins with a detailed account of the Orwell's frightening experiences in Barcelona, where they were pursued by the Spanish communists at the behest of NKVD agents who regarded them as dangerous Trotskyites, and with the fate of other POUM volunteers like Georges Kopp and Bob Smillie who suffered brutally – indeed, Smillie died in custody in contentious circumstances – at the hands of the Spanish communists. Equally troubling for Orwell was his subsequent failure to bring such matters to public attention in Britain, because the media outlets that might have been sympathetic were controlled by communists or fellow travellers. The possibility that Orwell might himself have subsequently worked for British intelligence is explored and rejected, though serious consideration is given to the list of names that Orwell provided to his old flame Celia Kirwan, who was then working for the government's Information Research Department (IRD), of figures in public life who were generally ill-disposed to the Labour government and British values. Orwell provided no information that British security was unaware of, and Newsinger concludes that, though not an act of treachery, it was an act of which Orwell should have been ashamed, and probably was. When discussing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newsinger is principally concerned with the work's value as propaganda. He reminds us that Orwell's target was totalitarianism and the concept of might-is-right, not simply the Soviet Union. Moreover, though clearly set in post-war Britain, the book must not be read as a critique of the Labour government but as a warning that even in established societies based upon Western liberal values totalitarianism can emerge. Nobody warns against something that can't happen.

Finally, Newsinger looks at Orwell's relevance for us today. Like the Introduction, the Conclusion is unnumbered and, again like the Introduction, is brief, almost cursory. Moreover, “today” begins with the Korean War and moves on through the Vietnam War and then the Thatcher years, and the rolling back of trade union influence, through to the advent of New Labour. There is no real discussion of the collapse of the Soviet empire and the decline of social democracy in Europe or the upsurge in populism and nationalism. The name Trump appears only five lines from the end. Newsinger's sharp analytical eye would have brought valuable insights into these relevant events. On the other hand, Orwell's Victorian views on gender, birth control, and sexuality are very much viewed through modern eyes. No misogynist, he concludes; just a troglodyte.

Overall, Newsinger delivers a valuable addition to Orwell scholarship. He sets out to explore the shape of left-wing politics during Orwell's time, critically examines his reaction to them, and shows how they affected his thinking. He does all this with aplomb. Given the title, however, it would have been instructive if Newsinger had indicated how Orwell thought – indeed, how he, Newsinger, thinks – those working-class values that Orwell identified as democratic socialism, “when all the nonsense is stripped off”, could actually be brought to bear on public affairs. Falling back on the analogy of a plant growing slowly and blindly towards the sun doesn't cut the mustard. Moreover, what happens when the source of these alleged democratic values, the old industrial working class, simple transforms? What if the very pressures of poverty and insecurity that had given rise to the solidarity, the equality, the “mateship” that Orwell believed characterized that class were alleviated by measures passed by socialist governments? In what, then, would hope reside?