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 on Thursday.
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.
Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finland’s 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, allowing 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.
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’.
In response to questions from reporters, Foreign Minister Winston Peters said that Goff’s remarks were “disappointing” and made the envoy’s position “untenable”. “We have asked the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Bede Corry, to now work through with Mr Goff the upcoming leadership transition at the New Zealand High Commission in London,” Peters said in a written statement.
Goff has been New Zealand’s envoy to the UK since January 2023. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials were “in discussion with High Commissioner Goff about his return to New Zealand”, according to a written statement from New Zealand’s foreign minister, which did not divulge more detail.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark — who was Goff’s boss during his time as a lawmaker — denounced his sacking in a post on X, where she wrote the episode was “a very thin excuse” for removing a “highly respected” former foreign minister from his diplomatic role.