Phil Goff talks to the media in Auckland, New Zealand, on June 16, 2021. (Ricky Wilson/AP)
New Zealand dismissed its most senior diplomat to the United Kingdom after he questioned President Donald Trump’s understanding of history at an event in London — remarks that New Zealand’s prime minister said made the envoy’s position “untenable.”
Phil Goff, New Zealand’s high commissioner to Britain — an equivalent to ambassador between Commonwealth countries — was attending a public event at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, on Tuesday. Elina Valtonen, the foreign minister of Finland, was the guest speaker.
During a Q+A session, Goff, who was in the audience and stood to pose a question, said he had been rereading Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1938 after the Munich Agreement, which allowed Adolf Hitler’s Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia, and paraphrased an oft-quoted admonition attributed to Churchill, directed toward then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: “You had the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, yet you will have war.”
“President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?” Goff asked during the live-streamed event. A couple of muted laughs broke out in the room, a video recording by Chatham House showed.
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Valtonen responded by saying she would “limit” herself to saying that Churchill, who she also quoted, “has made very timeless remarks.”
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he would remove Goff from the job and called the remarks “disappointing.”
“If he had made that comment about Germany, France, Tonga or Samoa, I’d have been forced to act,” he told reporters.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters that he “fully support[s]” the foreign minister’s decision to dismiss Goff, a move he called “entirely appropriate.”
“It’s pretty simple. In a foreign affairs ministry, we expect our ambassadors to be diplomatic. Those remarks weren’t — that made his position untenable,” the prime minister said.
Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand, disagreed, calling the dismissal a “new low bar” on social media. “One assumes NZ Govt is super sensitive to Trump Administration. Prima facie the question is not a sackable offense,” she wrote on X.
The Oval Office bust of Churchill has become a political talking point amid recent White House changeovers, becoming something of a proxy for the historical current different administrations care to emphasize.
New presidents typically redecorate the office and change what is on display. President Barack Obama preferred over Churchill a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “There are only so many tables where you can put busts — otherwise it starts looking a little cluttered,” he said. Trump brought a Churchill bust back. Biden swapped in civil rights icon Rosa Parks, to the consternation of headline writers at U.K. tabloids. In his second term, Trump has restored Churchill once again.
Goff is not the only high-profile foreign official to point to the bust as an emblem of perceived contrast between Churchill’s legacy as a champion of transatlantic bonds and Trump’s White House confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week, which drew dismayed reactions across Europe.
“And to think the bust of Winston Churchill was in the same room as it unfolded,” senior British Conservative Party leader Robert Jenrick said in a post on X, calling the meeting a “degrading spectacle.”
Diplomats have found themselves in trouble for criticizing Trump before. Former British ambassador to the United States Kim Darroch resigned during Trump’s first term after he described the White House, in leaked secret cables, as “inept,” “dysfunctional” and “unpredictable.” Those remarks were not intended for public consumption.