As a right-leaning Brexiteer I know the Left is not going to win back Ukip 'gammon' voters with insults and ridicule

Gammon is a funny word to pick for the angry white middle-aged men who voted Ukip, the problem is it comes from the Left, who have argued for so long against negative stereotypes based on people’s appearance

This discourse falls into the wider trend of demonising the electorate, something which has become more and more common in the last decade

The collapse of​ Ukip in last week’s local elections brought a new word to my attention. Go on Twitter, type “gammon” into the search bar, and you’ll see it’s become an increasingly popular way of referring to a certain kind of person.

“Gammon” describes white men over the age of 55 who have done well from the economy, but are angry and intolerant. They also appear to have high blood pressure, hence the skin tone, which is the reason for the moniker. I guess they’re from that generation who decided to rattle with statins rather than address their pathological relationship with butter.

The first question is whether or not “gammon” is a racist term, as has been claimed by some people who have been referred to by the label. There are people who believe it’s impossible for white people to experience racism, but “gammon” is at the very least a pejorative linked to skin colour, and definitely an ad hominem attack.

As a comic, I don’t get offended by much. Gammon is a funny word to pick, an undeniably neat way of describing some of those angry geezers you see on Question Time who base their vote exclusively on who holds the nuclear codes. The problem is it comes from the Left, which has argued for so long against negative stereotypes based on people’s appearance. Social Justice Warriors’ Grand Poobah, Owen Jones, saw fit to retweet a joke containing the term, which doesn’t feel very consistent with his own values.

At 41, as a right-leaning white bloke who voted Leave, my next step will be into some kind of cured meats demographic. Maybe I’m being sensitive on behalf of my future entitled self, but I’m also getting a faint whiff of hypocrisy.

The gammon controversy wasn’t the only Ukip-based double standard floating around this week. Plenty of people on my liberal-dominated timeline (I am a stand-up comedian, after all) were claiming that all the Kippers had gone Tory.

Setting aside the fact that the numbers simply don’t back this up (Labour also won their fair share from the collapsing Ukip vote), it also ignores last summer when many northern Ukip voters blinked at the idea of voting Conservative and went back to Labour. But I guess those were “disaffected working classes seeing the error of their ways” as opposed to “racist bastards slinking back into the fold”.

This discourse falls into the wider trend of demonising the electorate, something which has become more and more common in the last decade. The rigid polling and trench-like warfare of British democracy in 2018 suggests many voters have faced so much antipathy for their choices that it’s radicalised them beyond their normal biases.

No one wins from thinking like this. We should be pleased that previous Ukip voters are returning to mainstream parties rather than trying to palm them off like the unwanted nougat in a bag of pick and mix. We should be welcoming them back and thinking seriously about why they left in the first place.

And the problem with a phrase like “gammon” is it makes it all too easy for people who fall under that description to wonder why they should be sensitive with their language or enter into discussions with the self-righteous lefties who insult them personally on the one hand and bemoaned how they’re the “lost working class” on the other.

If defeating prejudice and personal attacks in politics really is your cause, then the last thing you want to do is throw a new epithet into the mix. And if lefties want to take advantage of Ukip voters turning to other parties, then they had better start changing the way they talk about them – and fast.

Geoff Norcott's tour, Traditionalism, has an additional, autumn leg starting in October; details here