New Zealand\u2019s high commissioner to the UK has been fired after questioning US President Donald Trump\u2019s grasp of history at an event in London. <\/p>\n
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: \u201cI was re-reading Churchill\u2019s speech to the House of Commons in 1938 after the Munich Agreement, and he turned to Chamberlain, he said, \u2018You had the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, yet you will have war.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office,\u201d added Goff. \u201cBut do you think he really understands history?\u201d <\/p>\n
Goff was making a comparison between Trump\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
New Zealand\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf he (Goff) had made that comment about Germany, France, Tonga, or Samoa, I\u2019d have been forced to act,\u201d Peters told journalists. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s seriously regrettable and one of the most difficult things one has had to do in his whole career,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve worked with Phil Goff, I\u2019ve known him for a long time,\u201d said Peters, adding that Goff\u2019s comments were \u201cseriously disappointing.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are in that position, you represent the government and the policies of the day; you\u2019re not able to free think; you are the face of New Zealand,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
However the move was not without its critics, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis looks like a very thin excuse for sacking a highly respected former #NZ Foreign Minister from his post as High Commissioner to the UK,\u201d wrote Clark in a post on X. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have been at Munich Security Conference recently where many draw parallels between Munich 1938 & US actions now.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealand\u2019s high commissioner to the UK has been fired after questioning US President Donald Trump\u2019s 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: \u201cI was re-reading Churchill\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}