THE members of the House of Lords, that august assembly of scarlet-robed and mainly appointed peers which forms the upper chamber of Britain’s democracy, voted last week to stand firm against pressure to become fully elected.
After centuries as a hereditary chamber that only reluctantly permitted appointed members to join its clubby conclaves, no one expected the House of Lords to welcome the latest demand from the House of Commons to change its ways.
But as this longstanding battle between the upper-crust and the commoners entered its probably protracted final phase, it produced a somewhat counterintuitive notion: more elections may not necessarily mean more democracy.
Since 1999, the House of Lords has challenged the House of Commons — and thus the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has a majority in the more powerful lower house — on 350 issues. True, the Lords chose to oppose the government on some matters, such as a ban on fox hunting, that seemed to reflect the older interests of an assembly of nobles controlling vast estates where equestrian hunters charged and gamboled.
But many of the tussles related to civil rights and counterterrorism laws seen by the Lords as repressive. The Lords, in other words, became the improbable champions of the underdog in the face of a Labor government that once claimed the libertarian mantle for itself. In the process, the Lords displayed a doughty independence born of lifetime tenures that leave them largely aloof from electoral politics.
The battle now is between nonelected independence and electoral legitimacy.
The Commons wants to replace 600-odd life peers, appointed in various ways, and the remaining 92 hereditary peers with people elected from party lists for a single 15-year term. Some opponents of the plan argue that because accountability won’t be reinforced by re-elections, the voting might purchase an appearance of legitimacy at the expense of cherished independence.
“The promise of democratic legitimacy is a sham,” wrote Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, in The London Review of Books. “The bar on re-election strips voters of their basic tool for democratic accountability: the politicians’ fear that their constituents will throw them out of office.” Or, as one Labor legislator, Tom Levitt, said in the House of Commons, “it’s not the election that makes democracy, it’s the re-election.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair had favored a mixed House of Lords, half appointed, half elected, a plan that backfired when the Commons went much farther than he wished. The Lords — and Ladies — were not too keen on a mixed chamber, either, saying competition between Lords and Commons could create unmanageable tensions between two competing elected bodies
A hybrid house, said Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, a Labor peer, “is not a connection to democracy; it’s a connection to constitutional uncertainty and electoral unfairness.”
The House of Lords has always been a font of patronage. Almost by definition, the peers owed their elevated positions to the largess of their monarch and their ability to raise taxes and armies in return. Indeed, Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labor legislator opposed to the proposed changes, told Parliament: “The true curse of the British political system is patronage.”
And it may be that the police inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honors scandal gave the final push to almost a century of efforts by the House of Commons to limit the power of the Lords.
After centuries as a hereditary chamber that only reluctantly permitted appointed members to join its clubby conclaves, no one expected the House of Lords to welcome the latest demand from the House of Commons to change its ways.
But as this longstanding battle between the upper-crust and the commoners entered its probably protracted final phase, it produced a somewhat counterintuitive notion: more elections may not necessarily mean more democracy.
Since 1999, the House of Lords has challenged the House of Commons — and thus the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has a majority in the more powerful lower house — on 350 issues. True, the Lords chose to oppose the government on some matters, such as a ban on fox hunting, that seemed to reflect the older interests of an assembly of nobles controlling vast estates where equestrian hunters charged and gamboled.
But many of the tussles related to civil rights and counterterrorism laws seen by the Lords as repressive. The Lords, in other words, became the improbable champions of the underdog in the face of a Labor government that once claimed the libertarian mantle for itself. In the process, the Lords displayed a doughty independence born of lifetime tenures that leave them largely aloof from electoral politics.
The battle now is between nonelected independence and electoral legitimacy.
The Commons wants to replace 600-odd life peers, appointed in various ways, and the remaining 92 hereditary peers with people elected from party lists for a single 15-year term. Some opponents of the plan argue that because accountability won’t be reinforced by re-elections, the voting might purchase an appearance of legitimacy at the expense of cherished independence.
“The promise of democratic legitimacy is a sham,” wrote Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, in The London Review of Books. “The bar on re-election strips voters of their basic tool for democratic accountability: the politicians’ fear that their constituents will throw them out of office.” Or, as one Labor legislator, Tom Levitt, said in the House of Commons, “it’s not the election that makes democracy, it’s the re-election.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair had favored a mixed House of Lords, half appointed, half elected, a plan that backfired when the Commons went much farther than he wished. The Lords — and Ladies — were not too keen on a mixed chamber, either, saying competition between Lords and Commons could create unmanageable tensions between two competing elected bodies
A hybrid house, said Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, a Labor peer, “is not a connection to democracy; it’s a connection to constitutional uncertainty and electoral unfairness.”
The House of Lords has always been a font of patronage. Almost by definition, the peers owed their elevated positions to the largess of their monarch and their ability to raise taxes and armies in return. Indeed, Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labor legislator opposed to the proposed changes, told Parliament: “The true curse of the British political system is patronage.”
And it may be that the police inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honors scandal gave the final push to almost a century of efforts by the House of Commons to limit the power of the Lords.
