The problem with trying to do serious spelling reform in English is that the language already has two major "branches", British and American, and spelling reform would pretty much have to favor one over the other. It'd probably end up being based on American English, just based on number of users and because AmE spelling tends to be closer to pronunciation (sorry Brits, but it's true. We don't pronounce the -er suffix like we're French, and what the hell is going on with some of your town names like "Featherstonhaugh"). I can't see Commonwealth countries just lying down to accept that, and if you can't get all English users on board, then what's the point?
Languages where a single country has a "majority stake in the cultural control" of a language tend to be able to pull off spelling reform (German, Chinese, etc.). Languages where this isn't the case (English, Portugese, French post-1900) find it a lot harder to gain the necessary consensus.