May had a golden opportunity to put Lords repeal on the agenda, it would have helped her in the election.
A UK freeper or someone made the case for bring back hereditary Lords, people raised to play that role. Obviously that won’t happen.
Canadian Senate is similar, appointed by the PM (by the Governor-General on the “advise” of the PM). “Advise” of the PM is like “advice” from Don Vito Corleono, it can hardly be refused.
Australia has an elected Senate. But the election system is that stupid singe transferable vote which results in several weird small parties holding the balance of power.
STV sounds good on paper but look at Ireland (used for the lower House) and look at the Australian Senate, the system sucks.
Ireland Senate is indirectly elected.
Really I see no point in having an upper House in a Westminster-style parliamentary system, it just gets in the way. Save Australia they all have power that’s been limited to the point of pointlessness and a complete lack of legitimacy.
Eh, they've gutted most of the power of the House of Lords, but they still have the ability to slow down the passage of bills and amend them. I agree with the Coolidge philosophy that its better to kill bad bills than pass good ones, so I suppose its a good thing if it stops the government (regardless of which party is in power) from hastily passing too much knee-jerk legislation. Too bad the House of Lords can't kill bills outright anymore. In theory they could have stopped something like gay marriage regardless of the social pressure to pass it.
Still, the biggest problem is the Lords themselves, the whole body is basically a bunch of elitist aristocrats who want a cushy useless government job, so that's why so many Britons resent it.
I still like the unique, one-of-a-kind Tricamerial system I first proposed when I was 19 and a freshman in my college political science class: 1) House of Commons, 2) House of Representatives, 3) House of Senators. The lowest house, the Commons, is drafted into service "jury duty style" from a pool of ordinary Americans (like jury duty, they'd carefully vet them and eliminate any incompetent bozos, wackjobs, or obviously biased people with an axe to grind from serving). They'd serve a single 1-year term in government and would not be eligible to serve a second consecutive term. During that time their main job would be to serve as a check and balance over the other two houses and amend their legislation. (I'd probably also give them line item veto power, so they could remove individual parts of a bill, but not veto the entire bill) They could introduce bills of their own and send them to the other two houses for consideration, but they couldn't actually enact any legislation from any house (including their own). The other two houses could overrule any decision of the House of Commons by a 2/3rds vote. The power of impeachment would be solely in the House of Commons. Since they were drawn from the general population, unlike the other two houses, the members would have civilian jobs like teachers, bartenders, cab drivers, retail sales, etc., instead of all being lawyers and millionaire businessmen, and they'd be barred from taking money from lobbyists. That means they'd probably introduce legislation the other two houses would never start on their own accord. They'd elect a Commons Speaker from their own members, the same way a jury elects a jury foreman. I imagine a small body of about 50 legislators. Probably best to avoid cameras of their proceedings or it would turn into Reality TV show type spectacle.