Labour's Lord Desai has called for a "drastic cull" of 470 life peers to make space for elected or independent members of a reformed House of Lords.

"Why are they being soft on existing life peers? Why don't they go the way they went with hereditary peers," he asked a Westminster Charter 88 meeting. "What I would have preferred of the current life membership is drastic culling leaving more room for elected or independent members."

The veteran Labour politician, LSE professor and life peer since 1991 would like to see the government move quickly on the 587 life peers, which government white paper proposals will leave in place, to free up room for new members in a reformed chamber.

Or he argues reform must wait a long time for a "few timely deaths" to make space for change.

"Many of us are very old and may pop off but a lot of people are very young," he said. "Why this long space of transition?"

Desai supports an election within the life peerage - similar to the contest that whittled down their hereditary counterparts in 1999 - to scrap 80 per cent of their numbers.

"Rather than let the government's arbitrary rules or age to cull, I think we should have an open culling system and should reduce life peers to a fifth of their size," he said.

The veteran Labour politician is sanguine about the political row that would follow. "I like blood all over the place," he told constitutional reformers.

Desai "very strongly" believes in a fully elected chamber. "The public has a right to choose who will govern it," he said.

He rejects the "false dichotomy" set out in the government reforms between independence and election.

And the Asian peer scorns government claims that appointment is necessary to increase ethnic representation.

"The argument is often made that we require nominations to increase representation of ethnic minorities. I think that is a false argument that traps us in non-democratic forms of government," he said.

Describing Tony Blair as "more powerful than Stalin", Desai backs an elected second chamber to hold an overly strong executive to account.

"There is a problem with the way the whole system has concentrated all power in the PM. Whoever has a majority in the House of Commons is more powerful than Stalin and more powerful than the president of the United States because in that person are all the powers of the monarchy, executive and legislature."