> Do they really have a regular 'illiberal left' column these days?

No, the house style has been to have a short subtitle like that on every article for a long time. Sometimes the subtitle is just the name of the country or region being covered, just as often it's a one-off. Examples from this issue include "China's bad debts", "prostitution in Indonesia", "Venezuela talks", none of which are monthly columns.

The philosophy of the Economist magazine could be defined as liberalism. So they're probably hyper sensitive anti liberal ideas.