by Jo Bartosch, spiked
Why did the Scottish Greens bring a ‘queer, Tamil immigrant’ who can’t legally work full time into Holyrood?
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.