Alex Brummer, at The Blogs

Apply for a Blog

Aug 31, 2022, 12:50 PM

There is only one site for the Holocaust Memorial

Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick (right), holocaust survivor Sir Ben Helfgott and his grandson Reuben at Victoria Gardens in Westminster, London, celebrating the go-ahead being given to a Holocaust memorial. Picture date: Thursday July 29, 2021.

My father’s generation, all refugees or survivors of the Shoah and each with horrific stories of captivity, violence, escape and unrecognised heroism, mostly have passed on now. In our immediate family there are two brave and brilliant women still alive who experienced the sheer hell...

Jul 24, 2022, 9:06 PM

Ruthless Jewish care home closure is heartbreaking for Brighton

A keystone institution in many regional Jewish communities is the care home. Looking after, visiting and administering to the sick, the infirm and the simply elderly is a great mitzvah. It is also a source of satisfaction and great pride. My own visits to my...

Jul 13, 2022, 12:53 PM

How Ben & Jerry’s has divided our US cousins

A picture of a Ben and Jerry's pint of ice cream with the text 'Push the Jews into the Sea Salt and Caramel.' (Twitter)

Of all Britain’s top FTSE100 companies, the Marmite-to-Dove group Unilever lays claim to being the most attentive to the environment, social and governance (ESG) agenda. So it is astonishing that a company with such a woke approach should find itself caught in a year-long war...

Apr 21, 2022, 3:48 PM

Sanctioning Kantor will hinder British Jewish life

EJC President Moshe Kantor (Jewish News)

When it comes to Vladimir Putin’s barbarous war on Ukraine, Israel has been careful not to ratchet up the rhetoric. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is among those who have sought to mediate and Israel – wherever possible – is not turning its back on the...

Apr 7, 2022, 10:31 PM

Remembrance is glue binding Israel together

An Israeli flag at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 24, 2017. (Lior Mizrahi/Flash90)

The Ukraine war and the refugee crisis it has generated is a sharp reminder that Israel as a modern nation has been built on tribes. Long before the creation of the state in 1948, émigrés from Russian pogroms against Jews brought a fresh European perspective...

Mar 25, 2022, 10:41 AM

Ukraine devastation puts ‘Partygate’ in perspective

The race to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson is gathering pace.

The responses are oh so predictable. When Tory grandee and minister Jacob Rees-Mogg had the temerity to suggest what many of us have been thinking, that the war waged against Ukraine put the sins of Downing Street and ‘Partygate’ in some perspective, there was outrage...

Mar 10, 2022, 3:47 PM

In defence of one of the UK’s most disliked men

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich with a 'We Remember' sign after International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2018 (via Jewish News)

Britons have an awkward relationship with wealth. They are quite happy to be the ‘enablers’ helping the rich to spend and secure their wealth. But they also resent fortunes and conspicuous consumption and are only too pleased to see the newly-rich humiliated. The oil, property...

Feb 27, 2022, 12:23 PM

Food poverty doesn’t just affect other people

The United Synagogue provides nearly 200 families with weekly food packages

For most residents of upmarket Jewish districts of London and other UK cities, inflation and the rising cost of living is about someone else, not them. Sure, the £700 hit to energy bills due in April, when the price cap goes up, together with the...

Feb 10, 2022, 8:28 PM

A matter of life and death for Ukraine’s Jewish story

Looking through the rubble caused by the conflict in Ukraine

For many people in Britain, Ukraine is just another far off country in middle Europe that is none of our business, whatever the empire rebuilding ambitions of Vladimir Putin. The complacency is a reminder of events portrayed in the film Munich: The Edge of War...

Jan 26, 2022, 12:49 PM

My dear brother Danny’s sudden death is a devastating loss to us all

Yahrtzeit candle (Wikipedia/ Author: Elipongo)

Community became ever more important to us in the pandemic. No one I know has epitomised the community spirit in the past two Covid-stained years than my younger brother, Daniel, a stalwart of the times fractured Brighton and Hove kehilllot. His recent sudden death has...

Load more

About Me

Alex Brummer is the Daily Mail's City Editor