Do more elections equal more democracy?

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.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

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 counter-terrorism laws seen by the Lords as repressive. The Lords, in other words, became the improbable champions of the underdog in the face of a Labour 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 non-elected 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.

Prime Minister Tony Blair had favoured 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.

The impulse for change is not surprising.

Britain in the 21st century is far more ethnically diverse and far less deferential than ever before. But it is also a nation marked by political fatigue. ‘‘The public,’’ said one Labour legislator, Chris Mullin, ‘‘is not clamouring for more elected politicians.’’

Indeed, Britons have a particular reason for doubting the integrity of the entire body politic. Scotland Yard is investigating whether high-ranking officials in Tony Blair’s government tried to cover up an illicit trade in peerages for financial backing.

And it may be that the police inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honours scandal gave the final push to almost a century of efforts by the House of Commons to limit the power of the Lords. But expect a powerful rearguard campaign from the Lords and Ladies of the upper house. ‘‘The future of our Parliament is at risk if we upset the balance between the two houses that has served this country well,’’ said Baroness Boothroyd, a former speaker of the Commons elevated to the upper chamber.

Well, she would, wouldn’t she?

–ALAN COWELL