The Académie has no authority whatsoever, it's little more than a club for writers. The Education Ministry has authority for school programs and what is accepted in French language classes, but only in France. It only ever allows new uses, never forbids previously allowed things.

The OQLF (and French language Ministry) has a broader authority within Québec, but only for Québec.

The Ministry of Culture has some authority within the Brussels-Wallonia federation but it's quite limited.

No idea what it's like in Switzerland.

But there is no global authority for the French language (unlike German or Dutch for example). The language evolves by consensus.

I don't think an English standardization would change much in how people actually speak.

Imagine some would stick with original "bonjour" (Qubec), other more progressive would simplify to "bojur" and whatnote.

You have the same with "colour" and "color". Or "night" and "nite". From my observatio where you have some language authority there is at least consisten spelling (and english spelling is all over the place)

en_US vs. en_GB

fr_CA vs fr_FR

Besides, in case of Spanish the spelling is more uniform. Aforementioned locales are mostly for GUIs and regional wording differences. And the thread started with "unifying english spelling" which is just a mess…

As I recall, the American spelling of color and other words like that was actually dictated by a "pompous authority", namely Noah Webster, who write the dictionary bearing his name. He wanted to simplify some spellings he saw as overly complicated. I happen to agree with him, but this wasn't because of regular, everyday people in different regions.