Iain Macleod said of him that "Rab loves being a politician among academics and an academic among politicians; that is why neither breed of man likes him all that much." Lobby correspondents (journalists who report on political affairs, including non-attributable information leaked to them) were advised never to believe anything Rab Butler told them, but never to ignore anything he told them either. Ian Gilmour argues that Butler was always more popular in the country than in his own party, and that he acquired an unjust reputation for deviousness but was in fact less so than a number of his colleagues.