Michael Gove has hit a new low in the political discourse by quoting a Stormzy lyric in a Twitter beef with the Labour MP Angela Rayner. After Stormzy endorsed Jeremy Corbyn and laid into Boris Johnson, Gove dismissed him “as a far, far better rapper than he is a political analyst”. Rayner tweeted that “Gove is crap at both”, which prompted Gove to cram his entire foot into his mouth with the comeback: “I set trends dem man copy.”

The Twitter reaction was swift and unforgiving, not least because it is never ends well when a politician tries so painfully to be “down with the kids”. But, aside from the usual uncle-dancing-at-wedding cringing about it, one Twitter user, @Duggs_Bunny, got to the heart of the matter with a reply to Gove that read: “Congrats, you’ve found the Twitter equivalent of blackface.”

Gove’s dismissal of Stormzy as a rapper rather than analyst highlights the sneering elitist bigotry behind the tweet. It appears beyond his comprehension that Stormzy could possibly be intelligent, political and rap. Never mind that the roots of rap music lie in hip-hop which was, at first, as much social commentary as entertainment. Stormzy has been a critic of Tory policy, particularly around Grenfell; he has created a scholarship for young people to go to Cambridge; he has launched the #Merky Books imprint to showcase a “new generation” of voices. Stormzy is a far better source for political analysis than Gove, who is so distant from the daily realities of regular people he could not possibly understand them.

For Gove, Stormzy’s rap lyrics have no merit other than to be appropriated. No doubt he revelled in being able to use “dem”, at once showing off his “street” credentials, while also highlighting his linguistic superiority. He probably aimed to mock the supposedly out-of-his-depth rapper; to show him the error of his ways for daring to call out the politician. The tweet was particularly insensitive given Johnson’s history of calling “dem man” “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. Next time, Gove should take the advice from the title of the song he’s quoting and “shut up”. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, this is not a trend that his fellow politicians want to follow.

• This article was amended on 28 November 2019 because an earlier version named the wrong Twitter user, @bugsbunny. This has been corrected to @Duggs_Bunny.