EUAN McCOLM: There's nothing malign in criticising the election of a new Green MSP - no matter what the hard Left wants you to think

Published: 21:17, 19 May 2026 | Updated: 21:17, 19 May 2026 The election of the Scottish Green Party’s Q Manivannan to Scotland’s parliament is an outrage and it should not be the slightest bit controversial to state as much. Sworn in last week as an MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East, Manivannan is the new pin-up of the Scottish crank Left. A self-described ‘queer Tamil immigrant’, the politician enjoyed a lacklustre ‘career’ as a performance poet before pitching up at Holyrood, there to receive £77,000 a year. Q Manivannan’s election should be considered intolerable. Not because of the MSP’s views: more than 300,000 Scots voted Green on May 7 and democracy demands the incoherent nonsense spouted by Manivannan is heard in parliament. Nor should the politician’s heritage be considered, for a split second, a bar to Holyrood. Among current MSPs, former Green co-leader and now MSP for Edinburgh Central, Lorna Slater, was born in Canada, while the new MSP for Edinburgh South Western – SNP rising star Simita Kumar – was born in Fiji. Ms Kumar was the first woman from an ethnic minority background to serve as the leader of a political group on City of Edinburgh Council. Her years of public service in the NHS before moving into politics tell a great positive story about immigration and integration. The reason Q Manivannan’s election to Holyrood should be considered a scandal has nothing to do with politics, birthplace, or identity. It is simply this: Q Manivannan is not a UK citizen. The politician is in Scotland on a student visa, due to expire at the end of this year. And it is not improper to raise this as a serious matter. Rather, it is necessary for this is a wrong that must be righted. Q Mannivannan during the swearing in ceremony at the Scottish Parliament last week Manivannan has broken no laws in standing for – and winning – election to Holyrood. MSPs voted last year by 111-0 to pass the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 which extended the right to stand for election to those on temporary visas. That members are now complaining both in public and private about the Green MSP’s election tells us nothing good about the calibre of members in the last parliamentary session. First and foremost, this is a matter of Q Manivannan’s legitimacy as a legislator. Are we really to accept that the citizens of a country should be fine about the involvement of someone who isn’t a citizen in the creation of laws? Manivannan was born in India, a nation which – in common with just about every country in the world – requires those who stand for election to hold citizenship. Were a middle-class poet and UK citizen from Bearsden to pitch up in Tamil Nadu and seek election it would not only be forbidden, the Scottish Greens would be first to cry foul about colonial attitudes. Perhaps they can explain how precisely the election of a middle-class poet and Indian citizen from Tamil Nadu to represent Edinburgh, a city pock-marked by areas of deep deprivation, is different. We now wait to see whether the new Green MSP can secure a graduate visa, permitting residency in the UK for three more years. In a bid to see off the possibility of deportation during the current five-year Holyrood term, the Green MSP has also applied for a global talent visa though what, precisely, this talent might be is not clear. The little of Manivannan’s creative output available for scrutiny does not suggest it lies in the composition or performance of poetry. The Green MSP’s work slops from the meaningless to the cliched. Asked to compose a personal obituary in 2018, the politician wrote: ‘My name was an alphabet – Q. Not many people used it.  'I called myself ‘they’. I had no gender, my identity was always formed in opposition.  'I was kind because I was afraid of cruelty, I was angry because I was wronged, and I was hungry because I was starved.’ What absolute drivel. (Though it improves considerably if you imagine it being recited by the late Rik Mayall.) In a recently filmed performance, Manivannan read a poem about immigration saturated with cliches, from exhausted metaphors involving olive trees to heard-it-a-million-times stuff about red soil.  In the piece, the poet talked of those who have walked these ‘bleeding roads’ (a bit London cabbie, don’t you think?) then suggested one of the ways in which people might recreate these great pilgrimages was by taking a cruise. The long trip along the Amalfi Coast to freedom. Green supporters would very much like us to believe criticism of the election of Q Manivannan is malign. When considering whether something is indefensibly stupid, it is often useful to consider the opinion of the former pop star and high-profile independence campaigner, Pat Kane. Mr Kane, who describes himself as a public intellectual because nobody else will, wrote on X: ‘I hope the usual suspects don’t embarrass themselves (in vain, no doubt).  'We should be proud that the Scottish Parliament is capacious enough for singular people like Q to get a shot at political representation. And I’m pretty proud of @scottishgreens at the moment.’ If Mr Kane and others now risking whiplash as they contort to defend this situation stopped to think for a second, they might see why more than 80 per cent of Scots agree with former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford who has said Manivannan’s election ‘beggars belief’. The rules which allow Pat Kane to praise Holyrood for its capaciousness are downright dangerous. How might Manivannan’s acolytes feel if, at the next Holyrood election, a party on the Right stood candidates without citizenship who had previously served in, say, Viktor Orban’s far-Right Hungarian government? Former SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Manivannan's election 'beggars belief' How might Mr Kane feel about the capaciousness of the Scottish parliament if, in 2031, Reform packed the regional lists with candidates without citizenship, ranking them on the size of their historic crypto donations to the cause? The law of Scotland – as needlessly amended last year by idiots from across the political spectrum – leaves a gaping hole in the security of our democracy. While those on the hard Left continue to defend Manivannan’s presence in Holyrood, let us not hear another peep out of them about the – entirely real –danger of foreign influence on domestic politics. If Q Manivannan is allowed to remain in Holyrood, every criticism will be challenged by the Greens as a dog whistle. There’s plenty of mileage for the hard Left in painting the new politician as a fearless victim of hatred. If – as they should – MSPs swiftly legislate to ensure Manivannan must step down, the Greens will not only have an actual martyr but someone who will simply be replaced in the Scottish parliament by the next candidate on the party’s regional list. It’s a win-win for the cranks. During swearing-in last week, the new Green MSP performed humility, speaking of Scotland as a ‘bonnie home’, but actions speak louder than words and the decision of someone on a student visa to seek election to our national parliament speaks of the most breathtaking arrogance. Every second Q Manivannan remains an MSP compounds a national embarrassment. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.