New Zealand has dismissed its High Commissioner to the United Kingdom after the diplomat publicly questioned President Donald Trump’s understanding of the events leading to World War II.
The office of New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on Thursday that High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Phil Goff’s position was “untenable” following his remarks during a panel discussion in London.
During a Chatham House event featuring Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen on Wednesday, Goff compared Trump’s attempts to end the war in Ukraine to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which permitted Nazi Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia.
“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 dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war,’” Goff said during a Q&A session, referring to former UK Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain.
“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”
Declining to answer Goff’s question directly, Valtonen said Churchill had made many “timeless remarks”.
However, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark criticised the rationale for Goff’s ouster as a “very thin excuse”.
Clark, who led New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, said she had heard many people draw similar parallels when she attended last month’s Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Speaking to reporters later on Thursday, Peters said he had made a necessary but “seriously disappointing” decision.
“We cannot have people making comments which impinge upon our very future, no matter what the country is, whether it’s Niue, Samoa, Tonga, Japan or, dare I say it, the United States,” Peters said.
“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.
Goff did not immediately respond to a request for comment via his X account.
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