Exclusive: St Andrews PhD candidate and MP Q Manivannan on fighting for Greens in Scotland

In February 2021, Q Manivannan was on-call, working nights as a DRA Warden. Plagued by acute pneumonia and a stomach hernia, to guarantee their accommodation Manivannan spent winter nights cleaning up vomit, performing CPR and hauling drunken students up the stairs of their buildings.

Today, speaking to The St Andrews Tab from the Scottish Parliament in their first newspaper interview since election, Manivannan remembers their time in St Andrews as a “politically and culturally transformative experience.”

Manivannan entered politics through community arts organisation, falling in love with Gaelic and Scots storytelling through open-mic nights in the Aikman’s cellar, leading guided walks along the Lade Braes and winning the St Andrews Slam Poetry competition.

Epitomising their iconoclastic self-fashioning: Manivannan sports a Kashmiri coat. When I offered a seemingly benign compliment, Manivannan was keen to inform me of the “geographical space of oppression that is Kashmir and the shared Scottish-Indian roots of the Paisley pattern.”

As a PhD student at St Andrews, Manivannan first joined the Greens as co-convenor for the party’s Palestine solidarity campaign viewing Palestine as “a litmus test for where their other priorities were.”

Since their election, Manivannan has been subjected to a torrent of criticism – as one of the first two openly transgender MSPs and the first British parliamentarian to not hold British citizenship or permanent residency. Manivannan is currently on a student visa which will expire this year and is in the process of transitioning to a graduate visa as well as applying for the UK Global Talent Visa.

St Andrews, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Manivannan was able to stand for a seat in parliament following the 2025 Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act, which passed unanimously. Despite voting to the contrary, Conservative and Reform MSPs along with The Times, Spectator and GB News have come out in droves in what former First Minister Humza Yousaf has called a “shameful pile-on […] against a young minority politician who has broken no rules”.

Speaking about The Times’ investigation into their visa status and alleged position of privilege Manivannan said “a lot of what they have said is just wrong, for example that quote that’s everywhere saying that I pretended to be starving was taken from a poem I wrote back in Delhi talking about desire, anyone that reads it can clearly see it’s not me saying I’m actually starving.”

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Manivannan also described The Times’ investigation as intrusive asking: “How it is a matter of public interest to ask friends of mine whether I was queer as a child or if I was disliked for my intellect?”

“I don’t want to respond to claims of my privilege with where I didn’t have privilege or claims that I was poor, you know it’s so passé, it’s 2026. What is this miracle belief that immigrants both have to be destitute but also hardworking, contributing members to the economy?”

If Manivannan falls within the one per cent of unsuccessful graduate visa applicants, contrary to popular reporting, no by-election will take place at the expense of the tax payer. Instead, Manivannan will be replaced by the next candidate on the list.

Manivannan’s campaign was rooted in several themes from their academic research, platforming “a more caring politics rooted in the working class, the queer and the solidary.”

In their maiden speech in parliament, Manivannan foregrounded the findings of the Scottish Care Survey, telling the house “the fact that British nationals do not want to work in care because of the fragmentation of the sector is a damning indictment of the way society treats British women who do most of the care work in society, as well as immigrants who fill a large part of the work force.”

Manivannan’s cross-party instinct, committed to the regretfully unfashionable common ground permeates much of their thinking.

“There are so many common enemies, across issues: ineffective bureaucracies, improper taxation systems and institutions which don’t serve the people – let us begin from that common ground and work outwards towards our differences”.

One needs little more evidence of Manivannan’s ability to transcend traditional political barriers than their praise by Reform MSP Kim Schmulian who told BBC Debate Night: “[Manivannan] was in my induction group this week, I like this person, from what they have said I think that they are very intelligent and will make a positive contribution to society.”

The Times, The Spectator and GB News have been contacted for comment.