Lloyd would sometimes later claim that he might have become Prime Minister if he had resigned as Foreign Secretary over Suez or if he had made more fuss over his sacking as Chancellor. His biographer D.R. Thorpe dismisses this as "wishful thinking", arguing that Lloyd was not even in the same league as Joseph Chamberlain or Rab Butler, politicians who were - in different ways - of first-rank importance despite not becoming Prime Minister. Rather, he was "more Exeter rather than Balliol", i.e. a respectable middle-ranking Oxford college, rather than a prestigious one.