In the last 24 hours two British senior politicians from both sides of the House of Commons with clear responsibility for our role overseas have been raising concerns about internal aspects of our nation and it is clear that both of them have missed the wider picture by a huge distance. Jeremy Hunt, the new Foreign Secretary has been wasting the limited time he has with his colleagues in the EU trying to persuade them to use their influence to further criticise Russia for its attacks on two people in Salisbury. This attack was desperate and led to one death and four very ill people including one Police Officer, plus major disruption in two towns in the West country. However as the media pointed out, earlier in the day before Hunt made his speech, if the UK want to give Russia a hard time, they could simply deny Russian Oligarchs the opportunity to invest in London. At one fell swoop this would open up property opportunities for other people and send a strong message to the Russian Government. The other politicians is the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, Barry Gardiner who claimed that a second referendum on Brexit could trigger riots on the streets of Britain and suggested that Labour colleagues backing a public vote on the final Brexit deal “undermines the whole principle of democracy in this country”. Just like Hunt, Gardiner is wrong although in his case Gardiner is suggesting that inviting people to confirm their views on our departure from the EU is a anti democratic which is simply nonsense. Democracy is about listening to people and paying attention to their views. However the big picture that both men are missing are matters such as the murders of thousands of innocent people in locations such as Syria, Yemen and Gaza where many deaths are happening every week. In the cases of both Syria and Yemen, some of these deaths are as a result of British weapons used by our own military in the case of Syria and by Saudi Arabia in the case of Yemen. Indeed the Saudi’s are even murdering their own people which is a matter just as important if we are wanting to treat them as our allies. In the light of the sad death of Kofi Annan at the weekend it is clear that what we need to invest in International relations both in the EU and more widely, but this investment needs to go beyond worries about what happens on our Streets and instead focus on the bigger picture. In due course such a focus will also help our International Trade, irrespective of where we end up inside or outside of the EU, but it will also help to deal with riots on the streets across the world as peace is sought and achieved wherever possible.