You might enjoy Frank Furedi. He's not like Zizek or any of the post-modern folks. He's a left-leaning public intellectual (and sociology prof in the UK). His roots are marxist but he's doing some really creative and thoughtful, readable political commentary. Also youtube videos. He's quite lucid and very contrarian/common sense. He writes for the magazine Spiked at www.spiked-online.com. His website: www.frankfuredi.com

Also the ever prolific Noam Chomsky, a kind of libertarian socialist in addition to his extremely important work as a linguistics theorist.

Other lefties of note would be French economist Thomas Piketty - bestselling criticism of our current form of capitalism. David Graeber's another biggie, anthropologist/anarchist who's written extensively on the history of the idea of debt.

Most lefties focus more on economics and add other things as they relate to that eg: colonization etc. The 'culture wars' stuff is almost exclusively a US thing. Even in Canada, it's limited (tho JBP has certainly gotten a blast of it from the U of T).