CNN — British Home Secretary Suella Braverman arrived in Rwanda on Saturday to discuss a controversial agreement which will see the UK deport asylum seekers deemed to have arrived illegally to the
CNN
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Ferrari’s miserable season has gone from bad to worse as the Italian manufacturer failed to get either car into the top 10 at its home grand prix for the first time since 1984.
Sebastian Vettel didn’t make it out of the first qualifying round and could only muster a lowly 17th place, while teammate Charles Leclerc made it into the second qualifying round but could only claim 13th on the grid ahead of Sunday’s race.
Ferrari knew it would struggle for speed coming into this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, but even they couldn’t have predicted things would be this bad.
Leclerc sits in fifth place in the drivers’ championship with 45 points, already 112 points behind runaway leader Lewis Hamilton. Things are even worse for four-time world champion Vettel, who only has 16 points and sits in 13th place.
In the constructors’ standings, Ferrari is in 5th place and a whopping 203 points behind leader Mercedes.
One miniscule silver lining for Ferrari is that its fervent supporters – known as the ‘tifosi’ – were not present to witness the disastrous performance, with races still being driven behind closed doors.
READ: Lewis Hamilton pays tribute to Chadwick Boseman after Belgian GP victory
“At the end, we expected it a little bit coming into the weekend,” a visibly frustrated Leclerc told Sky Sports. “We knew Spa [last weekend] and here were the two worst tracks for us. It’s like this … it’s tough.
“For now, it’s like this and I need to extract the maximum out of the car. It hurts even more that it’s at home. This is the reality for us at the moment. We need to work,” Leclerc said.
At the top of the leaderboard, Mercedes recorded yet another 1-2 as Lewis Hamilton secured his 8th pole at the Italian Grand Prix, with teammate Valtteri Bottas narrowly losing out by one tenth of a second to start second on the grid.
“It was a fantastic performance from the team,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “It wasn’t the easiest, you’ve seen how close it was between us. It needed a clean lap and I got both.
“Valtteri was strong and kept pushing, I was a bit nervous going through the final sector. In the years I’ve been here, I’ve had times when we had less downforce and grip, [but] the speed through the Lesmos [corner] was awesome. It’s trying to finds the right balance which is not so easy,” Hamilton said.
McLaren’s Carlos Sainz put in arguably the performance of the day to secure 3rd for his best ever grid spot, while Racing Point driver Sergio Perez’s 4th place equaled his best ever qualifying position.
Top 10
- 1. Hamilton
- 2. Bottas
- 3. Sainz
- 4. Perez
- 5. Verstappen
- 6. Norris
- 7. Ricciardo
- 8. Stroll
- 9. Albon
- 10. Gasly
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CNN
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British Home Secretary Suella Braverman arrived in Rwanda on Saturday to discuss a controversial agreement which will see the UK deport asylum seekers deemed to have arrived illegally to the African nation.
The scheme is mired in legal difficulties – no one has yet been deported – and Braverman’s visit has been criticized as she invited journalists from right-wing titles to accompany her, excluding liberal ones.
Braverman landed in Rwanda’s capital Kigali where she was greeted by the permanent secretary to Rwanda’s foreign ministry Clementine Mukeka, and the British high commissioner to Rwanda Omar Daair. Later, she visited a housing estate intended to provide accommodation for migrants in the future.
The trip comes 11 months after the UK government outlined its plan to send thousands of migrants considered to have entered the country illegally to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed.
The government argues the program is aimed at disrupting people-smuggling networks and deterring migrants from making the dangerous sea journey across the Channel to England from France.
The plan, which would see the UK pay Rwanda $145 million (£120 million) over the next five years, has faced backlash from NGOs, asylum seekers and a civil service trade union which questioned its legality, leading the government to delay its execution.
No flights have taken place yet, after the first scheduled flight to Rwanda was stopped at the eleventh hour back in June, due to an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), followed by months of legal challenges which have since stalled the program.
Before departing Braverman reaffirmed her commitment to the scheme, saying it would “act as a powerful deterrent against dangerous and illegal journeys,” PA reported.
But Sonya Sceats, chief executive of the charity Freedom from Torture, told CNN this is “profoundly misguided.”
“Policies of deterrence do not work when you are trying to target people who are fleeing torture, war and persecution,” Sceats said.
She added that the decision to invite only government-friendly media on the trip “confirms that they’ve stopped even pretending that they are speaking to the entire country on this issue.”
The UK government has made stopping migrants arriving in small boats on its shores a top priority.
The Illegal Migration Bill, which is being debated in Parliament, hands the government the right to deport anyone arriving illegally in the UK. In many cases, there are no safe and legal routes into the UK, meaning many asylum seekers can only arrive illegally.
Under this bill, people arriving in the UK “won’t be admissible to have their asylum claim assessed even if they are refugees coming from war torn societies,” said Alexander Betts, Director of the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Center.
Instead, they will face immediate removal either to their country of origin, or a third country, like Rwanda.
But there are concerns that the proposed legislation is illegal.
“When you open up the bill, on the first page there’s a big red flag which says: This might be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights,” Betts told CNN.
He added that the proposed bill is of “historical significance,” since it amounts to “a liberal, democratic state abandoning the principle of the right to asylum.”
The United Nations Court of Human Rights has warned that the bill, if enacted, would be a “clear breach” of the Refugee Convention.
There are also concerns that the bill is unworkable. The Rwandan government has indicated that it can only process 1,000 asylum seekers over the initial five-year period.
By contrast, 45,755 people are estimated to have arrived in the UK via small boats taken across the English Channel in 2022 alone.
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