Thomas Cromwell’s lack of xenophobia

We could perhaps do with a Thomas Cromwell in UK politics today. This is from Tracy Borman’s biography:

Cromwell’s love of all things Italian was highly unusual for a Londoner. Andreas Franciscius had been aghast to discover on his visit to the capital that its inhabitants ‘not only despise the way in which Italians live, but actually curse them with uncontrolled hatred’. This was corroborated by another Italian visitor of the period: ‘The English are great lovers of themselves, and of everything belonging to them; they think that there are no other men than themselves, and no other world than England; and whenever they see a handsome foreigner they say that “he looks like an Englishman” … They have a great antipathy to foreigners, and imagine that they never come into their island, but to make themselves master of it, and to usurp their goods.’