This chapter brings together what we have learnt about the politics of public inquiries at three different levels. First, this chapter explores how the politics of public inquiries is marked by the complex interplay of different forms of depoliticising and politicising elements which we can think of as politicising to depoliticise. Second, it explores the extent to which the politics of public inquiries both reflects and seeks to reproduce the dominant elitist ideas which underpin British politics (the British Political Tradition). Third, it ends by considering the role of public inquiries within the organisational and institutional ensemble of the state. This chapter considers public inquiries to be indicative of a particular mode of representation. In short, key to the functionality of inquiries is their ability to shift politicised eruptions of popular sentiment into formal channels (especially Parliament) where they can be contained and moderated by elites. Thinking this through reveals the depoliticising role formal politics can play and cautions us against reifying formal arena politics as the ultimate expression or form of politics.