He is also a Vice President of the Jewish Leadership Council and one of the co-hosts of the weekly podcast How To Win An Election from The Times, presented by Matt Chorley and alongside Peter Mandelson and Polly Mackenzie.

[6][7] In 2023 he published his first book, a memoir titled Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad, describing the persecution of his Jewish parents in the Second World War, how his mother survived Hitler's death camps and his father endured slave labour and starvation in Stalin's Siberian Gulag.

After Owen had announced his resignation from politics in 1992, Finkelstein was the spokesman for a group of young SDP members who joined the Conservatives.

During his period with the SMF, the organisation brought New York police commissioner Bill Bratton to London, for the first time introducing UK politicians to the new strategies being used there.

[20] Between 1995 and 1997, Finkelstein was Director of the Conservative Research Department and in that capacity advised Prime Minister John Major and attended meetings of the Cabinet when it sat in political session.

Finkelstein became among the earliest advocates of the 'modernisation' of the Conservative Party, laying out the principles of change in a series of speeches and columns in The Times.

Finkelstein joined The Times in August 2001 as part of the leader writing team and was Comment Editor from March 2004 to June 2008.

In June 2023, Finkelstein published a memoir, Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival (published as Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family in the United States), an account of his mother and father's experiences during World War II.