They are hard to categorize in terms of "left" and "right," as the terms are applied in the US. A distinction should be made here between economic and financial questions, on one hand, and other questions, on the other hand. In matters unrelated to economics and finance, they are generally quite progressive. In matters relating to economics and finance, they are invariably willing to justify and rationalize all manner of backwardness in the existing order (in my opinion); but occasionally they can be surprisingly forward-thinking in these areas as well.
Personally, I find their positions to be refreshingly orthogonal to those of news organizations based in the US.
It's not just the Economist, but western politics generally suffers a from unidimensional "left to right" classifications of the vast, multidimensional world of political viewpoints. It's actually kind of off-putting to see people classified only as being "left" or "right" of others.
For instance, you can easily be in favor of personal liberty, and also want smaller government. Or you can be against abortion rights, and also want welfare programs for the poor. These things are in no way tied together by any philosophical reasoning.
That's of course because left vs. right originally referred to the factions seated to the left and the right of the president in the French parliament after 1789.
The left were people supporting the revolution. The right were people supporting the king.
The left were thus generally looking for change, and more freedoms, and formed the core of liberalism. With the rise of socialism, liberalism in Europe got confined around the centre.
But of course as you point out it is difficult to classify, as e.g. already back then socialism was by no means uniquely left wing (Marx criticised ideologies he considered as "feudal" or "reactionary" socialist ideologies that would fit on the right in the "classic" French left/right split, for example), and terms like libertarian also spans the full spectrum (you have libertarian Marxists, various anarchist tendencies, left-communism etc.).
If you consider a few axes, though, you get a good idea: - level of support for authority and personal freedoms (e.g. from no state at all to authoritarian state), level of protection of private property (e.g. no legal support for private property of means of production to considering protection of private property as one of the most important aspects of government), and level of secularism. Of course there's plenty of oddballs combinations.
> Or you can be against abortion rights, and also want welfare programs for the poor.
> These things are in no way tied together by any philosophical reasoning.
You might be surprised. In Europe, most Christian parties fall centre-right to moderately conservative and tended to have separated out of either the conservative or liberal parties, or become the dominant force in their countries conservative parties, and do indeed often argue against abortion rights yet want welfare programs for the poor for clearly defined philosophical reasons.
The general philosophical reasoning for most of these parties in Europe can be shortened to "personal freedoms and personal responsibility, but not at the expense of christian morality", and the christian morality part both moderates the personal freedoms (abortion views etc.) and strengthens the social commitment (welfare). In Latin America, these parties tends to be more left wing. There's at least a century old tradition of "Christian democrat" thinking.
There are identifiable philosophical positions of "left" or "right" that don't necessarily indicate slavish adherence to any particular left-wing or right-wing party's platform. A given policy (welfare programs) can be justified by either a left-wing or a right-wing framework.
Left and right are different motivations and different ways of seeing the world more than they are different policy platforms.
Personally, I find their positions to be refreshingly orthogonal to those of news organizations based in the US.