IT couldn’t be described as a quiet introduction to Holyrood.
The election of Q Manivannan as an Edinburgh list MSP in the Scottish election last month came as a surprise to many – they were third on the Scottish Greens’ regional list.
But before even being sworn in, Dr Manivannan – who is non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them – found themselves at the centre of a UK-wide row, litigated on social media and a largely hostile media, over whether they should have been allowed to stand at all.
Holyrood unanimously passed the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act in 2025, extending candidacy rights to foreign nationals with limited leave to remain, including those on visas like Manivannan’s. Yet senior figures from parties including the SNP, Conservatives and Reform UK queued up to express surprise at the effects of the law.
One of the first two openly transgender MSPs in Scottish Parliament's history – alongside fellow Green Iris Duane – Manivannan also faced a torrent of abuse and media disinformation.
Since then, the Greens MSP – speaking on The National podcast – said that it has been a month and a half marked by contrasts.
One one side, Holyrood colleagues – notably from Reform UK – have explicitly called for them to be “reported, investigated, removed”.
“Enough of them have said problematic things about me, enough of them have supported people who say horrible things about me,” Manivannan said.
But, again, they insist that’s only one side of the story – and that the positives since then have outweighed the negatives.
“Members and MSPs from every single party have come and expressed their solidarity with me, including Reform,” Manivannan said. “I'm not going to name any names, but literally there has been at least a member from – usually multiple – coming in to say: We will have disagreements, but ignore this. This is not what you were here for. You were elected in by your constituents.”
They said that colleagues have also approached them and shared about family members being trans too.
“People have come forth to say, my sibling is trans, my child is, my relative is, my niece is,” Manivannan said.
“Especially as colleagues who are going to be working together for as long as we are, I think people slowly realise that if we were to look far enough, we would find common spaces of either mutual connection and or, well, mutual thought processes at the very least.”
The effect, they suggest, is that the longer they are in the building, the more some of the heat has drained away.
“I feel like the more time we spend there and the more, the less time I spend making that the core element of my identity, the more they're warming up as well. Because the one thing they can't deny is whether or not I can do my job.”
When it comes to the online abuse, Manivannan was less concerned.
“I feel like the online world is one that I no longer inhabit or find value in, especially when it comes to the conversations around it,” they said – adding that the amount of solidarity they see on the streets of Edinburgh couldn’t be more different.
“Also as an academic, I've studied the spread of right-wing rhetoric on social media platforms. I have conducted detailed analysis of social media engagement, troll farming,” Manivannan said.
“So, from a very academic perspective, it's almost felt dissociative. Not only am I going through it, at the same time, I'm also thinking – oh, this is very interesting. I must write down notes for later.”
Manivannan also spoke of how it was “interesting” to be the first immigrant on a visa in the Holyrood chamber.
“I think it has opened up the door to a bunch of conversations around civic participation and what it means for migrants to be involved in the democracies that they're placed in,” they said.
“It's been exceptional to see that conversation evolve and as difficult as the first couple of weeks have been for me, I'm hoping that it's easier for the second person or the third person who comes after.”
Of course, not everyone has been that welcoming. Manivannan said that the rhetoric used by Reform UK started off as simply “disgusting”.
“That's how it was received by the parliament, by pretty much every single other member of parliament who isn't in Reform, which is the one and extremely incredible thing that's happening in Holyrood right now,” they said.
"You're seeing cohesion with every other party, including with the Conservatives and Labour – simply because everyone understands that regardless of the disagreements and very strong disagreements they continue to have, basic human decency is the least common denominator of all of us.”
Manivannan added that they think “we're seeing that in some of Reform's own MSPs” too.
“Some have different priorities. Some do have priorities in healthcare. Some have priorities in wanting childcare to be expanded. And as much as that comes clubbed in with all of the other toxic rhetoric that's in there, I do think that there are different sets of priorities for different Reform MSPs,” they said.
“And I would be surprised if some of the rhetoric that's come out of the likes of Thomas Kerr and Malcolm Offord doesn't make some of them uncomfortable because any human being should be very deeply made uncomfortable.”
