Wellington: New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the United Kingdom has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand’s foreign minister said.
Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday.
Phil Goff has lost his job as High Commissioner to the UK.Credit: Getty Images
Goff, a former New Zealand opposition leader and Auckland mayor, asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British wartime leader Winston Churchill from 1938, when Churchill was a lawmaker in the government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
Churchill’s speech rebuked Britain’s signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, which allowed Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. Goff quoted Churchill as saying to Chamberlain: “You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war.”
Goff then asked Valtonen: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”
As the audience chuckled at the New Zealand envoy’s question, Valtonen said she would “limit myself” to saying that Churchill “has made very timeless remarks,” according to video of the event published by New Zealand news outlets.
The Winston Churchill bust has been returned to the Oval Office by new US President Donald Trump.Credit: AP
Valtonen’s speech on Tuesday was billed as covering Finland’s approach to European security at an event entitled “Keeping the peace on NATO’s longest border with Russia”.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said that Goff’s remarks were “disappointing” and made the envoy’s position “untenable”.
