I'm not a Brit, so I have no idea what the fuck is going on O_o
This is the way I understand it:
Imagine you're on a boat and you're on a direct path to barely miss a giant shitberg. The captain has held a vote asking the passengers to keep the course and not hit the giant shitberg, or whether to steer the boat into the giant shitburg.
Seeing an opportunity for the ship to graze the giant shitberg so that some of the shit might fall off to land on several of the minorities riding on the boat, most of the passengers on the boat vote to change course and hit the shitberg.
Per the will of the passengers, the captain is now steering toward the shitberg dead on. The captain warns the officers that they won't just graze the shitberg, but will steer directly into the shitberg if the officers don't decide just how much of the shitberg they want to hit. It turns out the officers as a whole don't want to either graze nor hit the shitberg at all and vote to that effect.
The boat is still headed straight for the shitberg, but as a whole, the officers don't put themselves on record for also voting to hit the shitberg in any way, shape, or form. The captain refuses to steer away from the shitberg at fear of upsetting the passengers that voted to hit the shitberg.