Sarah Vine, stop picking on young women's habits – you wouldn't know a good night out if it threw a tequila shot in your face

Vine recently moaned about how the middle classes are unfairly blamed for everything – but the numbers show it’s her precious middle-class older women who are doing more damage with alcohol than their younger counterparts

Daily Mail journalist Sarah Vine and her husband Michael Gove (Rex)

Another year, another Daily Mail column where Sarah Vine gets to spout nonsense in the name of moral decency.

Citing Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England who claimed that the NHS was being turned into the “National Hangover Service”, Vine has embarked on the annual tradition of shaming women for the outrageous crime of getting drunk.

Vine is shocked to see the images of drunk women because they’re not the “usual suspects” – “thuggish male louts or football hooligans” – but rather, *gasp*, they are female.

Alarmed at the sight of a young woman who has chosen not to wear tights (bare legs, scandal!), Vine goes on to wax lyrical about how terrible it is that these women won’t feel bad about going a bit too hard on New Year’s Eve. They probably won’t wince at the “mortifying humiliation” of one too many Jaegerbombs, or even feel that all-important “self-loathing” which dammit, women just don’t feel enough of in today’s society.

This isn’t to undermine the dangers of binge-drinking; it is a problem – but Vine, who wouldn’t know a good night out if it threw a tequila shot in her face, is claiming, or at least making it out to appear, that women are the greatest perpetrators of Britain’s drinking problems.

The women she attacks in the photos don’t actually look too bad, albeit a tad undignified in some cases, or dishevelled due to the rain that poured down on New Year’s Eve and, yes, probably due to a few drinks.

What Vine chose to omit in her piece is the fact that twice as many men die from alcohol misuse every year as women.

The most recent figures cited by her beloved NHS England reported that 19 per cent of men said they drank more than eight units of alcohol on at least one day in the past week, compared to 12 per cent of women drinking more than six units.

Men are more likely to drink than women, more likely to drink heavily, more often, and more likely to die from alcohol-related causes, but the media still enjoys painting women’s drinking as more problematic. And it’s all to do with an antiquated view on how women should and should not behave.

Ironically the young women Vine rails against in her column are actually the ones who are drinking less.

Alcohol consumption has seen a sharp decline in the past decade, and most adults are making an attempt to drink less – with those aged 16 to 24 primarily responsible for the fall in numbers.

But while drunk men are depicted in the media as being aggressive or disorderly, women are slammed as unfeminine, undignified and “laddish”, with a patronising, moralistic tone that rarely appears in opinion pieces berating male drinking habits.

If she really wants someone to blame, Vine should turn that magnifying glass a little closer to home.

Just last month, in fact, Vine wrote what was essentially an homage to the glass (“or two... maybe three”) of red wine she enjoys at the end of each day, whining about how the middle classes get blamed for everything.

A report in 2015 suggested that it is, in fact, middle class older people who are drinking at harmful levels – with middle-aged people “three times more likely to drink every day than younger people”.

But hey, Sarah, don’t let that stop you trying to shame a generation of women who are clearly having more fun than you ever have.

Enjoy your red wine at home with Michael Gove – and I’ll enjoy my tequila. Cheers.