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One key reason Royal Assent has not bn formally withheld in the UK for some time is that Parliament has bn careful to obtain Queen's Consent to measures, as they passed through Parliament, when such measures wld impinge upon Royal Prerogatives.+
+Some commentary gives the impression that Queen's Consent is solely a procedural matter, & that it is for the Commons itself (& the Speaker in particular) to define whether Queen's Consent is required. That is not so.+
+Queen's Consent is best thought of as a pre-clearance procedure. You check if you have Queen's Consent as a bill is going through, because you don't want to discover that you didn't have Consent only when the Bill is refused Royal Assent at the end.+
+The Speaker gets to decide whether the Commons is going to seek Queen's Consent as the Bill passes - whether it "needs" it in order to be accepted in the House to be read & voted upon. But that does not define whether the Bill *actually* needs Consent or has it if it does.+
+The Speaker can deem that a Bill "doesn't need" Queen's Consent in order to be read & voted upon in the Commons, even if it manifestly impinges upon a Prerogative. But by doing that he'd gambling that when it comes to it the Executive won't decide to refuse Assent.+
+If Speakers had historically frequently been slap-dash abt letting Bills through that impinged upon Prerogatives without obtaining pre-clearance, Royal Assent wld hv bn withheld many times. That it has not bn is a tribute to the fastidious, balanced nature of historic Speakers.+
+But now we hv a blatantly partial Speaker, who doesn't care if a bill impinges on a Prerogative but will just deem that Queen's Consent isn't needed anyway. It is in precisely this sort of case that Royal Assent should be withheld. That wld be Bercow's fault & failing.
