Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has sacked Phil Goff as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom over he made at a Chatham House function in London relating to US President Donald Trump.
Peters said Goff’s position was “untenable” because of the comments, in which the diplomat and former Labour leader asked a pointed question likening Trump’s treatment of Russia to Britain’s pre-war appeasement of Nazi Germany.
“I was re-reading [Winston] Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1938 after the Munich Agreement, and he turned to [Neville] Chamberlain and he said: ‘You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war’,” Goff said in remarks posted online.
“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office, but do you think he really understands history?” Goff asked Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, who was the speaker at the function.
Peters said he had no choice other than sacking Goff, who took up the London posting in 2023.
“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,” Peters told reporters.
“It’s not the way you behave as the front face of a country, diplomatically.”
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