London ? Labour Party chairman Hazel Blears had hoped opening 24-hour bars would end the chugging races leading up to closing time.

Turns out, Brits weren’t guzzling drinks to beat a deadline. Social drinking and binge drinking just happen to be the same thing in the UK.

“I don’t know whether we’ll ever get to be in a European drinking culture, where you go out and have a single glass of wine,” Blears said, according to Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper.

“Maybe it’s our Anglo-Saxon mentality. We actually enjoy getting drunk,” she was quoted as saying.