Well he would, wouldn't he?

Common card · No. 407563

"Well he would, wouldn't he?", 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 members of the British elite paid Rice-Davies and Keeler for sex, 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...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Joop van Bilsen for Anefo, CC0