Robert Peel

Before his famous premiership, Peel spent years as Home Secretary doing unglamorous reform: consolidating hundreds of criminal statutes, removing the death penalty from over a hundred offences and, in 1829, creating the Metropolitan Police. The design choices mattered most: a uniformed civilian force answerable to the Home Secretary, with instructions that stressed preventing crime and keeping public approval. The 'Peelian principles' later attributed to him were largely written up by others, but the force he set up became a model across the world.