Are one-night stands immoral? A survey carried out by some bored academics at Sheffield University discovered that 90% of women consider them so. Meanwhile, a less scientifically rigorous survey carried out by myself discovered that fully 100% of women think that one-night stands are immoral — afterwards, at least.

“We didn’t, last night, you know, did we . . . ?” they are inclined to croak, surveying the sulphurous wreckage of the bedroom, quite aghast, the fires of hell flickering in the middle distance. Oh yes, I’m afraid we did. Put it down to the drink, babe. Must have had what, five Bacardi Breezers and a vodka and Red Bull?

The Sheffield survey was taken by the media to mean that 90% of women don’t have one-night stands, which I suppose could possibly be true if the other 10% have been very, very busy. But I think it more likely that most women think one-night stands are certainly immoral, a bit like parking in a disabled person’s space by the cash machine, but nonetheless have sadly succumbed once or twice through circumstances which, they will tell themselves, were wholly or partially beyond their control. “Drunkenness and desperation” were the reasons for transgressions cited by those Sheffield researchers. Hell, yes, we’ve all been there.

The results of this survey were published in the very week that Mike O’Brien, the solicitor general, announced that the government intended to tighten up the rape laws — or, more to the point, address the disturbing fact that juries (ie, the public) are often disinclined to convict in rape cases for multifarious reasons — one of them being the drunkenness of the alleged victim. So maybe in future, O’Brien contended, consent to sexual intercourse which is acquired when one or both parties have been out on the piss, should not be regarded as consent at all.

You might argue that it is a little high-handed of the government to arrive at a conclusion that says the public and the law courts have been getting it completely wrong all these years. But we should have wearied of balking at high-handedness by now. Stupidity, though, is a different matter.

If I were to appear in court tomorrow charged with punching O’Brien in the face and offered, by way of mitigation, that I had consumed 14 pints of Stella immediately prior to the assault, my pleading would be entirely discounted.

Drunkenness does not lessen or excuse the offence, whatever it is, in the eyes of the court. When assessing the possible guilt of the defendant, the courts always dismiss inebriation as a mitigating factor. Our courts believe that it is the individual’s responsibility not to get drunk in the first place. This strikes me as entirely sensible. It assumes, as a given, that when we imbibe alcohol we know exactly what we are doing and what effect it will have, unless we are cretins (which would be a mitigating factor). We know that imbibing alcohol makes us drunk, loosens our inhibitions and our tongues — and, you have to say, very often our clothing.

It would be stretching the credulity of any jury to argue that on the night in question, m’lud, we downed pint after pint of fizzy lager, plus several chasers, not knowing the likely personality change that this action would engender and indeed the probable denouement: punching O’Brien in the face, or collapsing outside the kebab shop, or having desultory sexual intercourse with that rather nice high-cheekboned chap in the tight jeans. Of course we knew.

Now the government wants to have it both ways: it wishes the legal system to assume that actions undertaken by a person who is drunk are in one case the responsibility of the individual who is drunk and in another case — the extremely serious charge of rape — they are not. This makes no sense, either moral, logical or legal.

Further, O’Brien’s proposed change to the law ignores the probability that people drink alcohol precisely in order to loosen their inhibitions and to enjoy the consequences that come from being in such a state. In other words, the state of dereliction or abandon in which they later find themselves was planned at the beginning of the evening. If this were not the case, why would people drink alcohol? Are we to assume that they drink not realising what is to become of them?

Not so long ago Amnesty International carried out a survey which revealed that a substantial minority of the British people thought that in some rape cases women were partially “responsible” for the crime. Again, this strikes me as not entirely stupid — and yet the poll results were greeted with unmitigated horror by Amnesty and indeed the media. The British public needs educating about rape, they all howled. But it does not. People live in the real world, rather than the political world: they know what rape is and the actions which might be taken by women to avoid it.

My guess is that they also know that when a woman drunkenly consents to sex it is not the same as rape, and that any later sense of culpability or shame rests in equal proportions upon the shoulders of the man and the woman, however “immoral” either party might consider the act to have been.

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