Quote: post "Two great books absolutely turned me off socialism, I’m sure you’ve read them yourself but 1984 and Animal Farm. If they don’t scare you away from the left and the way in which they are steering us then I don’t know what will.'"
They are very fine books. Obviously though, not many on the left are advocating Stalinism, and I don't think resisting or trying to reverse the growth in inequality inevitably leads to it. 1984, I read more as being about totalitarianism generally, it was more of a fascistic dystopia in many ways.
The arguments put forward by Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier are broadly of the left.