The essence of any electoral system is that it should facilitate the peaceful transfer of power, the peaceful eviction of a Government which has become unacceptable to the electorate.  The real essence of democratic success is therefore negative, rather than positive.  Positive mandates are far less important, in constraining unacceptable regimes, than the threat of eviction.

My compromise formula for the House of Lords resembles Bragg's, but is more radical.  It addresses the two additional problems of gender imbalance and "second-class legitimacy" (which plagues the List system adopted for Wales and Scotland).  Like Bragg, I would rely on the same "electoral event" as for the Commons, holding elections on the same day, within the same cycle.  I would get each Constituency to elect two representatives - one man, one woman.  Overall, our system needs about 1200 representatives (Commons, Lords, European Parliament combined), and they could all be directly elected, at the same time.

The representative with the highest number of votes within each Constituency would sit in the Commons, thus acknowledging his or her democratic primacy.  The remainder would be assigned either to the Lords or Strasbourg, as the Parties judged best, and those assignments could be changed mid-term.  While no doubt the Commons MPs - the overall winners at Constituency level - would retain popular primacy, every elected representative would have won, outright, a Constituency contest.  The shadowy wraiths of the "List Members" would be banished from the corridors of power.