AHC: Swap the Houses of Parliament

With no more background than the wikipedia article on Parliament and the House of commons I'm curious is there a way to make the House of Lords act as the elected lower house and the Commons the more consultative upper house, perhaps a technocratic/vocational style body like the Seanad is supposed to be in Ireland.

Is this totally impossible or can anyone think of a way to make it happen?
 
An unreformed House of Commons could, in theory, evolve into a consultative body like the OTL Lords if reforms never really took place. The problem is that Commons gained at least theoretical supremacy long before the Great Reform and the Lords would still all inherit their seats or be appointed to them.

The key, which I cannot find, is to find a way to "reform" the Lords in some fashion BEFORE Commons takes the driver's seat and in such a way that opens up a road to elected Lords being within the realm of possibility.

While I cannot envision such a system developing in the British Isles, I could see something like that developing in Australia. As I understand, Australian colonial parliaments all evolved in a similar fashion:

  • A governor with absolute power
  • A governor governing alongside an appointed council. The council consisted of a mix of office holders and local bigwigs.
  • A governor governing alongside a partially elected and partially appointed council
  • An elected assembly forming
  • The government becoming responsible to the assembly
If Australians had a faster adoption of truly democratic council elections, I could see a (small) possibility where the upper houses, the Legislative Council, becomes the chamber to which the government is responsible to while the lower houses become forums for regional representatives to debate local issues and analyze proposed legislation.


 
Kind of.

Basically how could it develop that the historical House of Lords becomes the more powerful representative body and the Commons becomes the more consultative body.
 
Kind of.

Basically how could it develop that the historical House of Lords becomes the more powerful representative body and the Commons becomes the more consultative body.

Very, very difficult. For one the Lords will NEVER be elective in the way that the commons is. However, it could be somewhat elective. Today Peers are elected form their own number and inheriting a title no longer means an automatic seat. So maybe that reform could have been done earlier, say in lieu of the 1911 parliament act. The Lords would still retain their power of veto, but would know have a limited number of Peers.

Realistically though, this is practically ASB. You could have the Lords be liberal through the creation of liberal Peers and the Commons conservative via an election, but not much else. Sure if England/Britain remained a semi-absolute monarchy (ie no "Glorious revolution") then the Lords could remain powerful as well, but that would by no means make them representative.
 
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