[8][9][10] During his time as a student, Collins was captain of the St Benet's Hall team on two episodes of University Challenge in October 1994 and January 1995, during Jeremy Paxman’s first series of the show.

[13][14] From 2003 to 2004 Collins was the Political Officer of the Bow Group think tank, and contributed to its 2006 publication Conservative Revival: Blueprint for a Better Britain (Politico's Publishing, 2006).

[15][16] At the 2005 general election, Collins stood as the Conservative candidate in Northampton North, coming second with 30.8% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Sally Keeble.

Cameron's predecessor as Conservative leader, Michael Howard, had served as the constituency's MP since 1983; earlier in 2006 he had announced that he would not seek re-election at the forthcoming general election.

He spoke about the new Conservative–Liberal Coalition Government’s energy and environmental policy, and his support for a new nuclear power station at Dungeness in his constituency.

[39] Collins was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for political and public service.

Collins launched a high-profile inquiry into disinformation and fake news in the wake of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, which also investigated the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, concluding that "legal liabilities should be established for tech companies to act against harmful or illegal content on their sites.

[45] An inquiry into homophobia in sport concluded that "despite the significant change in society's attitudes to homosexuality in the last 30 years, there is little reflection of this progress being seen in football", recommending that "Football clubs should take a tougher approach to incidents of homophobic abuse, issuing immediate bans" and "It should be made clear that match officials should have a duty to report and document any kind of abuse at all levels.

"[53][54] In January 2015, following a panel at the European Parliament hosted by MEPs Ivo Belet, Marc Tarabella and Emma McClarkin, Collins launched campaign group New FIFA Now with former Football Federation Australia Head of Corporate and Public Affairs Bonita Mersiades and businessman Jaimie Fuller, calling for an independent, non-governmental reform committee to address allegations of corruption and promote financial transparency at FIFA.

[60][61] The International Grand Committee reconvened in Ottawa in May 2019, under the chairmanship of Bob Zimmer, Chair of the House of Commons of Canada Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics; in Dublin in November 2019, under the chairmanship of Hildegarde Naughton TD, Chair of the Dáil Éireann Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment; and virtually in December 2020, under the chairmanship of Congressman David Cicilline, Chair of the US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.

[62][63][64] Collins called for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to be defined as a category of harmful content in the UK Online Safety Bill, that social media platforms would have a responsibility to protect their users from viewing and sharing.

[65] In March 2020 Collins co-founded a fact-checking service called Infotagion to counter COVID-related disinformation, and in September 2020 joined the Real Facebook Oversight Board.

[66][67][68] Collins supports reforms to UK electoral law to ensure that analogue campaign transparency laws apply online; that online political donations are transparent and traceable; and that deepfake films released maliciously during election campaigns should be classified as harmful content that social media platforms are required to remove and prevent further distribution.

[72] Collins chaired charity Step Short, which was set up to renovate the Road of Remembrance in Folkestone, through which millions of men marched to boats taking them across the Channel to fight in France and Belgium during the First World War.