The public inquiry is a vital part of public life in Britain but is hugely under-researched. Where much existing literature takes the public inquiry at face value, treating it as an apolitical accountability and lesson-learning process, this book seeks to expose the politics of public inquiries. Having reviewed the limited extant literature on public inquiries, which I consider to be fragmented and divided over the question of inquiry functionality, this chapter sets out the overarching theoretical and methodological approach of this book. Here I consider the British state as underpinned by a dominant set of values termed the British Political Tradition (BPT), which legitimise an elitist form of government. I suggest that in Britain citizen preferences and interests are only given voice to a limited extent as the state seeks to quell and depoliticise discontent. I argue that this interplay between the BPT as the ideational underpinning and depoliticisation as the strategic toolkit of the British state can be explored through the work of Ralph Miliband and his notion of the politics of containment. I see public inquiries as a key part of the politics of containing crises and the political demands for change they catalyse.