New Zealand ambassador released in the UK-Trump knowledge questioned

New Zealand ambassador released in the UK-Trump knowledge questioned

The Hochkommissar New Zealand in the United Kingdom was released after he questioned the historical knowledge of US President Donald Trump during an event in London.

criticism of Trump's historical knowledge

Phil Goff, the former mayor of Auckland and formerly Foreign Minister, commented on historical parallels on Tuesday at the International Chatham House. He said that he had once again read Winston Churchill's speech in the British House of Commons from 1938, after the Munich Agreement. In this speech, Churchill turned to Neville Chamberlain: "They had the choice between war and shame. They chose the shame, and yet they will have the war."

comparison with the Ukraine conflict

goff signed Trump's efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine with the 1938 agreement, which was signed by Chamberlain and the leaders of France and Germany. Adolf Hitler gave this agreement the required consent to the annexation of a part of Czechoslovakia. A year later, the Nazi leader Poland attacked and triggered the Second World War.

reaction of the New Zealand government

New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters released Goff because of his statements and explained that he had acted similarly if Goff had made a comparable remark about other countries. "If he had spoken about Germany, France, Tonga or Samoa like this, I should have acted," Peters told journalists.

regret about the decision

"It is very unfortunate and it is one of the most difficult decisions that I had to make throughout my career," added Peters. He explained that he has known Goff for a long time and that his comments were "seriously disappointing". "In this position they represent the government and the current policies; they cannot think freely; they are the face of New Zealand," he emphasized.

criticism of the dismissal

But this decision was not without resistance, for example by the former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. She described the discharge as a "very poor pretext" in order to remove a highly respected former foreign minister from his position as a high commissioner in the United Kingdom. Clark wrote in a post on X: "I was recently at the Munich Security Conference, where many parallels between Munich 1938 and the current US acts are drawn."