[3][4] In 2016, he was accused by Andrew Neil on BBC's Daily Politics show of being a "Walter Mitty figure" and dismissed by Lord Heseltine as being "of no account".

[5] The commentator Iain Dale has accused him of having turned the Bow Group into an "impotent and irrelevant vehicle for Harris-Quinney to seek airtime for himself".

Since then, it has expanded under chairmen such as Geoffrey Howe, Leon Brittan, Norman Lamont, Michael Howard, Peter Lilley, Christopher Bland, and David Campbell Bannerman.

Addressing the organisation at a lecture prior to his appointment he criticised the centrism and lack of ideological clarity in the modern Conservative Party,[13] and called for an end to the "Bedroom Tax".

[11] In May 2015, with polls pointing to a hung Parliament in the run up to the 2015 general election, the Bow Group chairman, Ben Harris-Quinney, called on voters in marginal constituencies to support the values of conservatism by voting UK Independence Party (UKIP) where Conservative Party candidates could not win, and the Conservatives where UKIP could not win.

[14] However, this suggestion of tactical voting was opposed by Bow Group patrons Lords Heseltine, Howard and Lamont, in a joint statement.

The paper was authored by Graham Godwin-Pearson with a foreword by Brian May and contributions by leading tuberculosis scientists, including Lord Krebs.

The Bow Group also warned that Royal Mail was being significantly under-valued by the Government in its flotation by over £1 billion, which proved to be accurate.