"Well he would, wouldn't he?",[n 1] occasionally referenced as Mandy Rice-Davies Applies (shortened to MRDA), is a British political phrase and aphorism that is commonly used as a retort to a self-interested denial.
The Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies used the phrase while giving evidence during the 1963 trial of the English osteopath Stephen Ward. Ward is considered to have been made a scapegoat for the Profumo affair, a scandal involving John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War. Profumo had an extramarital affair with Rice-Davies's friend, the model Christine Keeler, then lied about that affair to Parliament before publicly admitting to misleading the House. Ward was tried for living on the earnings of prostitution. The prosecution alleged that Rice-Davies and Keeler were paid for sex by members of the British elite, who then paid Ward from their earnings. During the trial, Ward's lawyer James Burge asked Rice-Davies whether she was aware that Lord Astor—a hereditary peer and Conservative politician—had denied having an affair with her; Rice-Davies replied "Well he would, wouldn't he?"
Since its widespread adoption following the Ward trial, political commentators, communications experts, and psychologists have interpreted "Well he would, wouldn't he?" as a political phrase that is used to indicate that the speaker believes that another person is making a self-interested denial. They have also stated that the phrase functions as a commonsense retort to the lies of elite political figures. Linguistically, the phrase has been noted for its use of the modal verb would to create rhetorical effect. The phrase has been included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations since 1979.
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