As you say, Ake, it depends on what you mean by The Left. I mean the principles set out in that manifesto extract, including the repeated drum-beat in it that I omitted: for all, everyone, the many ...

Where I find Dawkins and co annoying is that they implicitly take that Marx quote that religion is "the heart of a heartless world" and then speak as if the solution is to get rid of the heart rather than make the world less heartless. Before anyone leaps in, they do say the science allows you appreciate nature in greater depth and so on. I don't disagree, but it is very much the background text not the foreground. My guess is that the average man on the Clapham Omnibus would describe Dawkins as anti-religious, rather than someone promoting a better alternative. But that is a guess.