Far be it for me to steer you towards intoxicating liquor, especially first thing on a Monday morning. I do, nevertheless, feel bound to point out that the next two weeks are destined to be uncomfortable for those who like a tipple.

Tomorrow Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, will report on a review of the liberalised licensing laws introduced a couple of years ago and will apparently conclude that - while they have not done as much damage as is claimed - they have hardly created a continental café culture either.

Meanwhile, ministers elsewhere are considering subverting the competition laws to allow all supermarkets to increase the prices of drinks such as Bacardi Breezer and White Lightning, which are comparatively cheap and popular with the young - particularly the young working class. The Conservatives say that they would achieve the same objective through higher taxes on strong cider.

The attack on drink doesn't stop there, though. At the weekend it was reported that ministers are worried about binge drinking among the affluent and those aged 30 to 50. Such is the Government's concern that Alistair Darling is expected to target “middle-class wine drinkers” in his Budget in ten days with a sharp increase in duty.

Whether the Treasury is really able to target “middle-class wine drinkers” with the precision that it thinks is doubtful. Mr Darling surely cannot be assuming that all wine drinkers are middle class or that middle-class people consume only wine and not any other alcohol. How is this targeting to work? Will off-licences be listing two prices for Nottage Hill shiraz depending on the class of their customers? Will we be asked “and what school did you attend” before they hand over a bottle? When the Government finally imposes ID cards and seizes a swab of all our DNA for a database in case we turn out to be psychopathic killers, will it also be printing certificates of social status that have to be shown before the Pinot Grigio can be purchased?

The Chancellor would be wise to restrain himself.

This is, firstly, because the language of the debate is ridiculous. Ministers will never persuade the voters that they are really concerned about the medical condition of the middle classes. It is less the state of public health than the public finances that motivates Mr Darling. If there is anybody out there who thinks otherwise, then I have on offer to the highest bidder a recently taken photograph of Elvis Presley with Lord Lucan, both of them clutching the Holy Grail and with Shergar lurking in the background.

The sloshed of suburbia are simply part of a wider scheme to squeeze more money out of the taxpayer in a way that looks morally virtuous. The Chancellor is, after all, holding his Budget upon one of the earliest days on record in a crafty drive to pick up the extra revenue from indirect taxes three weeks before the next financial year has started. What is proposed is a stealth tax masquerading as a slurp tax.

It is also a fraudulent exercise in terms of policy. What supposed harm are “middle-class wine drinkers” doing to the rest of society? Is there any evidence that drunken fights on the streets at 3am on a Saturday are between two accountants who have hit the Châteauneuf-du-Pape too vigorously? Is the vomit in which the Daily Mail claims that Britain wades a result of 24-hour chablis bingeing? No, it is not. The middle classes, like everyone else, should be made aware of the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption - but the notion that what goes on behind their closed doors is the same as what might happen in pubs or on the pavements is crazy.

Nor does one suspect that this humbug constitutes very shrewd politics. The spectacle of a Labour Government dancing to the tune of the midmarket press on the hours that hostelries may open unsettles the stomach rather more than a few cans of White Lightning might do. Increased (and more diverse) sales of alcohol are the result of enhanced prosperity. It is not for the Cabinet to micromanage how we spend our money. In any case, by historical standards, it is far from clear that we are a nation gone utterly plastered.

The essence of new Labour's electoral success from 1997 has been its ability to fuse its traditional electorate (which has long been shrinking within the population overall) with those who were once naturally attracted to Margaret Thatcher (an increasing segment).

The love affair between the party and the middle classes, especially in the London area, has been strained enough over the level of taxation - as well as state schools deemed so inadequate that expensive private education is regarded as a necessity, not a luxury - without the Chancellor hinting about “targeting” the way that any money that is left is spent.

Nor would it be consistent with Gordon Brown's declarations that Labour has learnt to love market economics for a precedent to be established in which Sainsbury's and Tesco are permitted to scam a particular category of consumers over the cost of an item. The phoney environmentalism that once provided an alibi for the “fuel escalator”, with petrol prices surging above inflation year on year, should not be replaced by a fake sentimentality over the health of the middle classes' livers being used as an excuse to try the same trick with alcohol taxation.

My hunch is that Mr Darling understands this. He is a former lawyer now on £135,000 a year, which is middle-class by any standard, and I have seen him drink wine and appear to enjoy the experience (there is no indication of any bingeing, though after the Northern Rock business over the past several months, who could blame him?).

It is Labour, not the middle classes, who should stay off this bottle.

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