New Zealand’s high commissioner to the UK has been fired after questioning US President Donald Trump’s grasp of history at an event in London.
Speaking at international think tank Chatham House on Tuesday, Phil Goff, the former mayor of the city of Auckland who has also served as foreign minister, said: “I was re-reading Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1938 after the Munich Agreement, and he turned to Chamberlain, he said, ‘You had the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, yet you will have war.’”
“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office,” added Goff. “But do you think he really understands history?”
Goff was making a comparison between Trump’s efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the 1938 agreement signed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the leaders of France and Germany which gave Adolf Hitler permission to annex part of Czechoslovakia. The Nazi leader invaded Poland a year later, triggering World War II.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters later fired Goff over his comments and said he would have done the same if he had said something similar about other countries.
“If he (Goff) had made that comment about Germany, France, Tonga, or Samoa, I’d have been forced to act,” Peters told journalists.
“It’s seriously regrettable and one of the most difficult things one has had to do in his whole career,” he added.
“I’ve worked with Phil Goff, I’ve known him for a long time,” said Peters, adding that Goff’s comments were “seriously disappointing.”
“When you are in that position, you represent the government and the policies of the day; you’re not able to free think; you are the face of New Zealand,” he added.
However the move was not without its critics, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
“This looks like a very thin excuse for sacking a highly respected former #NZ Foreign Minister from his post as High Commissioner to the UK,” wrote Clark in a post on X.
“I have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 & US actions now.”
