He's a lawyer--no, worse: he trains lawyers. His professional ethic requires he defends arguments regardless of whether he agrees with them or not. Besides, Orwell was a great English Socialist, nothing he says can be trusted.

Intellectuals position themselves all along the political (and every other) spectrum. They must be attacked or defended solely on the position they happen to be arguing, and if we choose to attack their clarity, logic or rhetoric, then we must do so even if we happen to agree with them.

It is very easy to denouce as sophistry those positions we have already decided to be false. What is not so easy is to realize how obvious this error is to others, and how consistently we conceal it from ourselves.