We need heads of state from around the world to speak out. This Higgins interview is actually from 2010 - we need heads of state to speak out now.
We have the convention that no foreign head of state or prime minister intervenes in another country's election. In part this reflects the view that the citizens of that nation should make up their own minds, in part the political reality that governments have to get on with whomever is elected. But I think the US presidential election is different. First of all the role of president of the USA affects the whole word (in a way that president of no other nation does). Then we have the issue that sometimes a candidate for president simply wouldn't be acceptable.
In the UK the Conservative party has traditionally seen itself as on the same political spectrum as the Republican party - think of the Thatcher-Reagan chemistry. Yet in the last few weeks Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson - perhaps our next Prime Minister - has made very negative comments about Romney. Obama has had a prickly relationship with the UK, but the UK has got on okay with an Obama USA, and the relationship has probably warmed in the last couple of years. I think there are however most serious serious problems for the UK in doing business with Romney and therefore with a Romney-led USA. But it needs the UK to speak out on these before the election.