Q Manivannan: this Green MSP is luxury beliefs made flesh

Newly elected MSP Q Manivannan is a Piers Morgan fever dream made flesh. The student poet who thinks that ‘they / them’ pronouns, long hair and brown skin make him radical was elected to the Scottish parliament for the Scottish Greens on Friday. On Monday, he joined 16 of his reality-challenged comrades and walked into Holyrood.

In his acceptance speech, Manivannan crowed that he is ‘everything that the hateful despise’, telling the crowd that ‘every barrier put before me with the Greens was the reason we pushed further’. He ended by saying ‘this is what diversity looks like in power’, as though Scotland in 2026 is still stunned by the sight of a brown politician. Notably absent from his speech was any solid mention of policy, or indeed much beyond his own identity.

Of course, being despised is quite the ego boost. It always gives me a lift when some seat-sniffing weirdo calls me ‘hateful’ for referring to him as a man. But the truth is, few people actively dislike Manivannan as an individual. What people object to is the Scottish Greens’ divisive brand of luxury beliefs. Listening to him does not inspire hatred, more recognition that he ought to be spouting off in a student-union bar somewhere and nowhere near the levers of power.

Manivannan would’ve been unlikely to make the cut were it not for the quirks of the Scottish political system. It was only after ministers loosened the rules over who could stand as a Holyrood candidate that the self-described ‘queer, Tamil immigrant’ was able to run at all. His name was third on the list, meaning he was effectively picked by a small group of party insiders and ushered into Holyrood.

It turns out that Manivannan might not be there for the full term because the terms of his student visa only permit 20 hours of work a week during term time. Being an MSP is very much a full-time role.

This is something the Green Party or Manivannan ought to have considered. Perhaps it was assumed that he is so exceptional that the usual rules do not apply. Indeed, in a speech on ‘trans rights’, which totally failed to articulate which rights men with special pronouns actually lack, Manivannan explained that there was something sacred about being trans:

‘Here’s the thing about being trans. It means beyond. It means across. It means transgender but also transnational. And that transness doesn’t stop at checkpoints, borders or walls.’

Whether this line of reasoning will sway the UK Border Force and the Home Office remains to be seen.

Despite the 30-year-old’s obvious political naivety and apparent lack of work experience, Manivannan has some talent. He certainly knows how to milk the soya-producing teats of his lefty circle. He appealed to colleagues for £2,089 of funding for a temporary graduate visa. Since his election, Scottish Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay has vowed that the party will do ‘anything we can do to support Q’ with the visa-renewal process.

Manivannan’s views are exactly what you would expect. On his website, he boasts of being ‘passionate about more caring politics rooted in the working class, the queer, and the solidary; politics that includes, that listens to people’. To this end, he believes in the full decriminalisation of pimping and brothel-keeping and was a fierce opponent of former MSP Ash Regan’s attempts to protect women and girls through the Unbuyable Bill. He also supports the administration of experimental drugs to children who believe they’re ‘trans’ and predictably thinks that Palestine should be ‘free’.

While claiming to be an outsider because of his skin colour and his decision to pretend not to be a man, Manivannan is the epitome of privilege. Becoming a poet and anthropologist before choosing to study international relations at St Andrews is every bit as much a class marker as the dreadlocks sported by Debrett’s-listed trustafarians in the 1990s. In short, Manivannan displays his politics like a designer handbag; his opinions are simply an extension of his ego, a way to show the world that he is a good person. He is the perfect symbol of Green narcissism.

Jo Bartosch is co-author of Pornocracy. Order it here.