Ara Darzi, 55, has been more sure footed than any of the other GOATs appointed in Gordon Brown’s “Government of all the talents” in 2007. He proved to be an effective, hardworking minister and remains indispensable, while his fellow GOATs are long out to pasture. Born in Baghdad to expatriate Armenian parents, Darzi trained in Dublin and moved to the UK as a surgeon in 1990. An academic clinician who pioneered laparoscopic surgery, he went on to make his mark in policy with ambitious healthcare proposals in London as parliamentary undersecretary of state—which, where implemented, have been a success—and he installed quality as the lodestone of the NHS in his 2008 report, High Quality Care for All. He is the Paul Hamlyn chair of surgery at Imperial College London and director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, and he was awarded the Order of Merit in the 2016 New Year Honours.