The referendum we should get, but won't

You've probably seen that Gordon Brown wants a referendum on an alternative voting system for Westminster elections.
It's not for this blog to discuss the merits of the relative voting systems, of the motivation behind Gordon Brown's sudden conversion to the idea of voting reform, of the attractions to the Lib Dems in a hung parliament of such an idea etc.
What I do want to say, however, is that if there is a constitutional reform that the country is crying out for, if there is a democratic deficit that needs addressing, the way we elect MPs to Westminster is not the most pressing. How about the fact that this Prime Minister and his Scottish cohorts vote on issues south of the Firth that they can't vote on in their own constituency? How about the fact that the biggest nation in the United Kingdom is the only one without a national assembly?
The referendum we need is a referendum on English Independence. At the very least a referendum on an English Parliament. Any other reform that is supposed to improve democratic representation is simply a sticking plaster on a gunshot wound.