Q Manivannan is a Scottish Greens candidate for Edinburgh and Lothians East. They’re standing in the Scottish Parliamentary election on 7 May 2026. On the Edinburgh Greens website, Q describes themself as a “queer, Tamil immigrant” aiming to bring a “politics of care and compassion” to Holyrood.
And, what really caught our eye was this line in their profile:
We are an island of friends, not strangers. Our communities are thicker than hate.
A thinly veiled swipe at Starmer’s infamous ‘Island of Strangers‘ speech? We’re listening – and I spoke to Q to find out more.
Scottish Greens and transphobia
I opted to get the least pleasant question out of the way first. One of the first things I noticed when researching for the interview was that a lot of Scottish anti-trans groups are very het up about Q’s candidacy. When I asked how they felt about this, the replied:
It feels like I’m doing a good thing by pissing off the right people
Q is trans, and Scotland has been an epicenter of transphobic lawfare in recent years. It was pressure group For Women Scotland that was behind last year’s transphobic Supreme Court ruling, for instance. However, we talked about that ‘For Women’ claim failing to include cis women who stand alongside the trans community. Q said:
We’ve seen such solidarity from our cis women comrades. We’ve seen such incredible warmth. I’ve been held by them after I faced assault and multiple other kinds of violence, and I was nursed back to health by my lesbian friends.
They also mentioned the pledges within the Scottish Greens manifesto to stand by the trans community. These include banning conversion therapy, ensuring access to healthcare, and stamping out transphobic hate crimes.
We talked about the fact that women’s, trans and immigrants’ rights are bound together. After all, the political forces oppressing us are often one and the same. Q recalled that:
There was a speech at Trans Pride a couple of weeks ago that said that ‘trans’ doesn’t just mean transgender but also transnational, in the sense that our bodies and our identities don’t stop at a checkpoint, are not bounded by structures that do not serve us.
‘Exactly what Scotland is dealing with right now’
Given that it’s the “island of friends” line that piqued our interest, I also asked Q about how their immigrant status influenced their politics. They were clearly pleased with the opportunity to talk about their Tamil heritage.
Coming from a lower-caste background in Tamil Nadu, the southern state of India, they told me that the state’s politics “always had strong resistance tones”. Q also spoke with admiration about Indian politician B. R. Ambedkar, who was born to the Dalit caste, and campaigned tirelessly against ‘untouchability’:
I continue to call myself a queer Tamil immigrant because we come from a background of people like Ambedkar, who are directly oriented to a politics that is all inclusive, that has ecological justice.
This has been going on for decades, a conversation where ecological justice is directly tied to battling the caste system, to making sure that people’s circumstances are not dictated by wider capitalist systems, which is, I think, exactly what Scotland is dealing with right now as well. Even if we don’t call it a caste system, you have individuals relegated to particular work, along with their families – it’s a generational thing.
That point about inclusive politics alongside ecological justice certainly aligns with the Scottish Greens’ messaging. Likewise, Q’s profile states that care for struggling people and care for the environment are “one and the same”.
Given that these interconnected struggles are close to our hearts at the *Canary,*I asked Q to say more. As an illustration, they used the example of the US/Israeli war on Iran:
That is not just a matter of genocide, but it’s also about emissions. It’s also about the environment being directly affected by acts like a Scottish government-owned airport being used to commit large-scale murder and being used to enable a genocide.
‘A litmus test’
They went on to speak more broadly about the replication of this same pattern across the world:
I think the Greens have just gotten frustrated to the point of realizing that every single thing that we’re dealing with in terms of the ecology is tied into imperialism, is tied into Western colonialism, and it’s tied to the space that we have right now.
Addressing that seems to be the key. Honestly, convincing people of that on the doorstep feels like it’s never been easier, because I think the right wing lines of, ‘oh, this is just social justice’ – like it’s a bad word – is starting to fail horribly, because everyone else is feeling the effects as well, not just the minorities.
Speaking of imperialism, we of course got to chatting about solidarity with the Palestine solidarity movement. Q told me that the Scottish Greens’ Palestine Solidarity Group was the reason they joined the party in the first place. They explained:
For me, it was a litmus test to show that the Greens are happy to be in a place that they can express unpopular views and unpopular policies if it meant be doing the right thing.
‘An excellent case study’
Jumping off that point about doing the right thing, our conversation moved on to the topic of prison abolition. Both the Canaryand the Scottish Greens support prison abolition policies, but the subject can often be hard to broach with an unfamiliar audience. Q laughed at that, and said:
the focus always tends to be on this idea that if the Greens are elected into Parliament, that on the first day, we’re going to declare that all prisons are gone for good, and then that’s it.
They stressed that abolition needs to be evidence-based, that it shouldn’t be rushed. However, Q also spoke of both prison reform and abolition as “one and the same”, with prison reform creating a society in which abolition is possible. They explained that:
Scotland in particular is an excellent case study, because you have regions already in small areas where the crime is almost nil, where people leave their doors unlocked, where the police have barely any job to do. It’s still possible to have spaces like that, except it’s only some parts that have that privilege, and other parts of Scotland have to struggle, especially the poorer parts.
So when we’re speaking of the idea of prison abolition, it’s not simply about getting rid of prisons, but of making it a society where we move towards this kind of ideal.
The threat of Reform
As we reached the end of our interview time, I asked if there were any other burning issues Q wanted to address. Unsurprisingly, given the stakes of the upcoming election, they brought up the rise of the far right and Reform UK.
In particular, Q (quite rightly) derided the idea that Reform was in any way a party of the working public. They didn’t mince words, either:
there is a global authoritarian movement rising, and that it is not one that is led by working people – it is directly millionaire- and billionaire-funded. When they say cut taxes, they mean cutting taxes for the rich. When they say we need to drill the North Sea, it means lining the the pockets of more rich billionaires.
Q also talked about the tactics used by the likes of Reform, and how to counter them. Bringing things full circle, we came back to that all-important politics of care:
The ways in which they’re reaching their audiences are through money, they’re through targeted media and social media towards forms of politics that are directly oriented around systemic sabotage, and that is exactly what we need to counter with this politics of care.
We left off on an ambivalent note. We’d talked a lot about our shared trans identities, and the concerted attacks on community. Likewise, Q’s immigration politics are also informed directly by their own lived experience, with all the fears that brings. They told me that:
I’m scared, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, but I think being scared drives us to feel a sort of urgency – it’s going to be an interesting next few years.
That rings true for me, and I’m sure it will be be the same for a lot of readers. The only way we, as a society, can move past the politics of fear – feeling fear, inflicting fear – is through solidarity and care for one another.
That applies to our politicians just as it does to the rest of us – and it’s heartening to speak to a candidate who recognises that.
Featured image via Edinburgh and West Lothian Greens
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