Trans Green Party candidate with no British visa elected to Holyrood

[IwantToRetire]

Q Manivannan, who identifies as non-binary, was elected as an MSP on the Edinburgh & Lothians East list for the pro-independence Scottish Greens.

It was reported earlier this week that the former PhD student has appealed to colleagues for £2,089 of funding for a temporary graduate visa.

This would give the anthropologist and poet a further three years to work and live in the UK, picking up the taxpayer-funded MSP salary of £77,711.

Manivannan is said to have told colleagues this would help buy time to save up the £5,047 cost of applying for a global talent visa, the UK immigration category for promising individuals in specific sectors.

The self-described “queer Tamil immigrant” was only able to stand in the election after SNP ministers loosened the rules over who could be a Holyrood candidate.

Full article https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/09/trans-green-party-candidate-migrant-elected-holyrood/
And at https://archive.is/LhZYy

Reform couldn't have dreamed for a better headline!

Ditto.

Oh you got me there. No way to come back after that rapier like attack.

Or perhaps you’d like to reflect on how sanctimonious and superior your post sounded?

Have seen some awful stuff on here where women lacking any understanding of feminism seem to think it's all about whacking trans identified people with a big stupid stick

Lacking any understanding…Big stupid stick… Receipts? Some sort of considered viewpoint?

I haven't read much of the thread, so you can try and put me right.

You’re expecting everyone else to do the hard work for you.

A totally different breed unfortunately.

Let's imagine for a second that this person was a Reform candidate and he'd won.

Imagine the hullabaloo from The Greens, SNP et al re his immigration status.

Exactly.

I have a couple of things worthy of consideration. A trans identifying man has as much right to represent as to be represented. The green party are, in my opinion crackers but they belive twaw and so he is not breaking any laws by standing for the green party. If there are issues with his visa, then the home office will sort.
I assume holyrood has lots of gender neutral loos. Should this chap choose to use a female loo, he is very likely to be put right by the administrators of holyrood. If not, I hope there will be a challenge from a gc person going about their business. In any case, these seem to me to be either democratic rights on his part, or women's rights on the other.

They’re not an immigrant.

The definition of 'immigrant' in multiple dictionaries is someone who has moved to another country on a permanent basis. If this MSP doesn't wish to stay here permanently, then I'm dismayed that he stood for parliament since the lack of a desire to stay here permanently suggests that he really doesn't have a stake in the country's future.

I may be misremembering, but I thought that he referred to himself as an immigrant?

‘Manivannan uses they/them pronouns and describes themselves as a "queer Tamil immigrant".’

Surely we haven't been forced in to silence all these years to then have posters thinking we ought to shut up. I am happy for you to think me stupid, since we've never met, I think you'd be suprised

Thank you.

Why on earth do some of you think I'm a supporter of the greens? Is it because I'm feminist and not anti trans. All stories about trans identified people are not automatically right for feminism? I have been on this board for a good many years and have been a feminist for many years more.

Calling me 'dear' is offensive and not something a feminist would say.

Not sure. Tbh, I haven’t been following it. They came here to study and now they’ve been elected or selected to be an MSP for five years.

I don’t particularly like that either but all list candidates were widely promoted. Including on here.

It’s better than calling you a man which has been aimed at me many times.

Calling women's rights anti-trans is not something someone actually committed to the equality of women would think or say either.

Do you not think women are allowed to have different opinions? I don’t think feminism means we should all be like the Stepford Wives.

If one has been called a male, repeatedly, on a predominantly women’s forum then one might think to look inward.

John is a more common name tbf 😂

Yes

These people are vile

ah

it becomes clear

Do you mean that this candidate was promoted or that the concept of list candidates was promoted?

I've not previously had a problem with the list as a concept, but I'm beginning to think that another method of proportional representation might be better in order to allow for more emphasis on the personal accountability of candidates.

Since you're an SNP member, you'll be aware that the current method was designed in order to prevent any party having an overall majority (primarily - it is suspected - to avoid an SNP majority being used as clarion call to independence) and that is why Alex Salmond's landslide was such an unexpected achievement. The current result has produced exactly the type of hobbled government intended.

So far as this candidate is concerned, I've not seen reference to them on Mumsnet previously, but I might have missed that.

What does?

In a thread we were both in, someone posted a link to a “who to vote for” or something site. I clicked on it and it had all the list candidates but no constituency candidates. I had just ranked my own region’s list candidates for my party, which is why I knew it was only list candidates in the link.

I looked at my party’s and probably everyone else looked at theirs. I didn’t look at the Greens as my vote was going to be SNPX2.

They would have been on there though, it’s just that none of us looked!

So, like most people, I only found out about this candidate due to the controversy.

Thank you for offering your perspective. This is more constructive than the post I was responding to, which you have to agree could be reasonably interpreted as either antagonistic or patronising…

Trying to work out why this thread is on the feminism sex/gender board. Is everything about someone who is trans a feminist issue? I, stupidly thought feminism was about women and women's rights. It's a bloody muddle at the moment. Have seen some awful stuff on here where women lacking any understanding of feminism seem to think it's all about whacking trans identified people with a big stupid stick.

By now you’ve likely picked up that the women posting on FWR are concerned about this Green SMP being elected when he is a representative of a political party that has campaigned against women having single sex spaces that excludes men who identify as women.

A political party that would legally permit men who identify as women back into sports compromising fairness and safety. A political party that has kicked out women who want to retain the meaning of ‘woman’ as helpfully defined by the Supreme Court a year ago. Given that he is trans/non binary, we can safely assume he’s in broad agreement with those policies.

Very few posters on this thread are ‘anti trans’ as long as men who identify as women do not access toilets, changing rooms, wards, podiums, prisons, or rape counselling or refuges that are designated for the female sex. The Green Party policies, on the other hand, are very anti-women.

In any case, these seem to me to be either democratic rights on his part, or women's rights on the other.

I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by this ^^. But another reason that he is being discussed on FWR is that of political representation, which significantly impacts women and our rights. You argue that a man who identifies as a women as much right to represent as to be represented, which sounds like you mean that this SMP has the right to represent men who identify as women / are transgender? That’s your view.

Mine would be that this means he represents 0.44% of the over-16 Scottish population who identify as trans. Considerably smaller I’d guess for immigrants identifying as trans. Meanwhile 50% of the population (women) has less than 50% of the SMPs representing them. My personal hope would be to increase female representation at all political levels as a step towards redressing inequality of the sexes instead of representatives working against women’s rights but I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.