JACOB Rees-Mogg has admitted that he only lay down on a Commons front bench because the opium had seriously hit.

The Leader of the Commons apologised to fellow Tories for sprawling on a bench, slipping out of consciousness and vomiting into a sterling silver bucket during a crucial vote, confessing that he had packed his pipe too tightly.

He continued: “I’d taken a tincture of pharmaceutical cocaine before my speech, to give me the eloquence of Cicero, so I prepared a pipe of the poppy to calm my spirits afterwards.

“Unfortunately the sly Chinaman who brings my medicine up the Thames by junk failed to warn me of its unusual strength, and I found myself quite overcome.

“As a gentleman does I reclined and allowed the terrible visions – snakes, sodomites, a Conservative MP crossing the floor entirely because of me – to writhe and twist before my repose.

“I am now perfectly recovered. Tell me, how did last night’s vote transpire? I trust my dark imagining of a loss by 27 votes was naught but an opium dream?”