When Leo Varadkar launched his leadership campaign for Ireland’s ruling party, Fine Gael, earlier this year, he did so with cupcakes and coffee from an establishment that would hold its own against the flat white meccas of Melbourne. But now that he is taoiseach, Varadkar has branded his leftwing critics “latte socialists” – the implication being that if you claim to want to improve the conditions of working people while also enjoying the combination of espresso and steamed milk, you are a hypocrite.

It’s a sign of our straitened times, in which wages are falling and inequality is growing, that a product as ubiquitous and relatively affordable as coffee is now the luxury that no good socialist is allowed to enjoy. Even among some politicians who identify as left of centre, coffee has come to be seen as an absurd indulgence. “Bit bizarre hearing these rightwing calls for a ‘Barista Visa’”, tweeted Labour’s Andy Burnham, now the mayor of Manchester, in April. “God forbid the idea of waiting longer in the morning for their posh coffee,” he said, as if the rest of us subsist on pints of lager and pots of tea.

Once, leftists were accused of harbouring more rarefied tastes. In Ireland, smoked-salmon socialist used to be the go-to insult. In South Africa, it’s Gucci communist. In Argentina, it’s hippie con osde – a hippie with a private health plan.

The classic British term is champagne socialist or, if you want to push it a little further, Bolly Bolshevik, for the lady or gentleman with an appetite for Bogdanov and Bollinger. In Australia, it’s chardonnay socialist, because enjoying a white wine while advocating a society in which the community owns and controls the means of production, distribution and exchange is just not on. Such political ambitions should be accompanied by cheap ale, served in flat caps, with a lump of coal for dipping.

In France and Germany, the equivalents retain echoes of earlier times. The salonkommunist or salonbolschewist is the German “drawing-room communist”, who speaks the gospel of Marx from the comfort of his book-lined abode, rather than preaching Engels from deep inside a Berlin techno club. The French term gauche caviar, or “caviar left”, now conjures up almost unimaginable decadence, a 1980s world occupied also by the US “limousine liberal”.

The rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn has prompted the creation of a new set of pejorative terms based on the supposed characteristics of those leaders and their supporters. Corbynista echoes Chavista, because, of course, Corbyn loves Venezuela. Momentum is referred to as Maomentum. Tankie, a term used to describe Stalinists, is making an online comeback. Sanders supporters were dubbed Bernie bros, even as the Vermont senator picked up more support among young women than Hillary Clinton. Now, the US has brocialists, dudes who don’t let their belief in democratic socialism get in the way of being sexist.

The link between supposedly luxury goods and ideology shows no signs of abating, though. The goods have simply been downgraded, which means that, in this austerity-ravaged era, we can look forward to hearing about the macchiato Marxist, the cortado Communist, the foodie Foucauldian and many more.