Camilla Cavendish

Where are you going this summer? Maybe you’re off to see the Maldives or Venice before they sink under the waves. Or perhaps you’re on a private jet, like Taylor Swift whose carbon-heavy mileage is starting to worry both protesters and fans. This is the climate change paradox. The more obvious it becomes that the weather is changing, the more we seem determined to enjoy the last hurrah. This week I met someone who has bought a second home in Spain — a decision they admitted is irrational, since…

The writer was head of the Downing Street policy unit under David Cameron When it finally came, Britain’s election announcement was a damp squib. Forget the sewage in our rivers, hospital queues and overcrowded prisons: this government couldn’t even rustle up an umbrella for the prime minister as he braved torrential rain on the steps of Downing Street. For many of us, the overwhelming sense is relief at ending the uncertainty. It is 14 years to the month that David Cameron came to power, pres…

This month, some of the best and brightest 18-year-olds are attempting what I think of as the quadruple high jump — taking chemistry, biology, maths and a fourth A-level in the hope of getting into medical school. These students are the goody-goodies, the strivers with a vocation. But only a few years ahead of them, young trained medics are feeling unloved, angry and radicalised. With public satisfaction with the NHS at a record low of 24 per cent, and the tax burden at a postwar high, the juni…

Do you fancy becoming immortal? Me neither. Silicon Valley titans who lust after “escape velocity from death” leave me cold. But most of us would love to stay younger for longer — preferably without Botox. A stream of breakthroughs suggests that the science of ageing is now at an inflection point. Already, our perceptions of old age are changing. People who packed out concert halls in their youth to hear the Beatles sing “will you still need me . . . when I’m 64?” now think that old age starts…

Has it become too hard to fire people? That’s an uncomfortable question to ask, in a world where we regularly hear of unscrupulous employers bullying, failing to pay overtime, or throwing qualified staff overboard, as P&O Ferries did so disgracefully in 2022. The bad guys undercut good businesses, which want the UK to better enforce the laws against exploitation. But good employers who play by the rules are also increasingly worn down by the laborious process of trying to remove underperformers.…

When I was a child, my Scottish mother used to give me nightmares by reading me a terrifying book about 16th-century witchcraft trials. Given that her favourite play was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, this wasn’t entirely surprising. The Scottish puritans who burnt almost 2,500 women at the stake were probably of the same stock as the fanatics who settled in Salem Massachusetts, Miller’s setting for his brilliant attack on McCarthyism. I was reminded of all this when Scotland’s Hate Crimes Act c…

What do you do if grandma goes on strike? Or when the crèche calls to say your child is sick? Working parents with young children grit their teeth, promise their employer they will make up the hours, and brace themselves for even less sleep. With childcare costs now surpassing mortgage payments for some families — especially those with two kids under the age of five — it’s no surprise the government has seen a political opportunity in the mess. The Conservative party is making childcare the fas…

Imagine that a James Bond villain decided to achieve world domination not with armies or drones but through our brains. They might manipulate our minds to get us addicted to fantasy worlds, turn us against one another and reduce our ability to concentrate. Inventing the smartphone would do it. Then persuading us to give it to our children. Until now, parents who fear that these omnipresent devices have made children sedentary, distracted and depressed have been cowed by powerful companies, nai…

If economic growth could be conjured by words, Britain would be as rich as Norway by now. Although inflation is falling and real wages are on the up, there is a sense that the country is in long-term decline, and ministers don’t know how to fix it. With yet more NHS and London underground strikes on their way, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves struck a chord this week when she drew an analogy with the plight of the country in the 1970s. Reeves’ acknowledgment of the failure of Labour corporatism…

Do you know where your 22-year-old is right now? A quarter of parents are tracking adult children on their phones, according to a new American survey. My friends and I used to joke about the Tiger Mothers at the school gate, rushing their kids to violin classes and extra maths, determined to win a race we didn’t even know we were in. There were children who had never been on a bus, knowing only the car, and who were nervous at our old-fashioned birthday parties in the garden, being used to orch…

I wish there was a word in the English language for the queasy feeling I get when an issue that matters is co-opted by people I can’t stand. I feel it every time I see the former home secretary Suella Braverman, whose parents came to Britain from Mauritius and Kenya, spouting bile about immigrants. I resent her ugly language, but also the fact that the right wing of the Conservative party, in its sound and fury over immigration, is letting establishment liberals off the hook. We can all scoff a…

This winter, food feels ever more like a minefield. The rich obsess over carbs and gut bacteria, sporting blood sugar monitors as the latest accessory. The poor are trapped on cheap food that has been industrialised beyond recognition. Our supposedly developed world contains the bizarre spectacle of people who are fat yet still hungry. Luckily, solutions are at hand. In fact, 2024 could be the year we start to turn the tide on obesity. Science is making increasingly clear the ways junk food imp…

At times, watching chancellor Jeremy Hunt deliver his Autumn Statement felt like witnessing a gladiatorial contest between a plucky contender and a many-headed hydra. Chop at one head — inflation — and another springs up — lacklustre productivity. Slay a headline tax, and a stealthier one looms. But the ugliest monster of all, the scourge of lives and the economy, is worklessness. A quarter of all working-age adults in Blackpool, Birmingham and Liverpool are neither in work nor seeking work. A…

When Sarah finally got up the courage to leave her cruel, manipulative husband, she hoped her life would get better. A middle-class professional, she had been belittled by him for so long that she had come to believe she was the problem. If he could no longer turn his rage on her, she hoped, he might enjoy their three children more — and she arranged for them to see him regularly. But it didn’t take long before two of the children started saying they were scared and didn’t want to see him. At wh…

My ink-jet printer is sulking, because I’ve tried to sneak a cartridge from a different company into it. Since it had an internal software upgrade, it detects my attempts to use recycled cartridges, and shuts down. It’s morphed into a different product from the one I bought. Appliances used to be labour-saving devices. Now, we have to coax and cosset them to function. Our posh new tumble drier shuts down with pitiful beeps after every second cycle, unless three different filters are cleaned of…

The writer is author of “Extra Time: Ten Lessons For Living Longer Better” They dwell among us, but we don’t see them. They are out of sight, warehoused behind the walls of care homes or in front of the TV. There are 55mn people in the world with dementia; almost a million in Britain. But we can’t bear to look. Every month I check my aunt’s bank account to see how much money is left to pay for the care home in which she has now lived for three years. There is no vestige left of the person she…

While politicians love to divert attention from their rivals, a “WTF?” message from the IMF was not the way Conservatives wanted to overshadow the Labour party conference. Sir Keir Starmer’s speech in Liverpool was drowned out by the “glug glug glug” sound of a Tory government losing control of the debt markets. But the turmoil has suddenly brought Starmer himself into sharp focus. Until now, Labour MPs have been downbeat about any immediate prospect of gaining power. The party is still trudgin…

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication