Age Appropriate?

Having lowered the voting age, the Labour Party unexpectedly lost the General Election of 1970, and it did not win a workable majority again for 27 years. It has not governed Scotland since before this month's 16 and even 18-year-old voters were born. It gave 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in Wales, where it has just come a very distant third.

But it has learned nothing. Of those who would vote at all, most 16 and 17-year-olds would vote Green or Nationalist, with enough in the right places for the new breed of Independents or for the Workers Party to be decisive against, for example, Wes Streeting, or Shabana Mahmood, or Jess Phillips. And most of the rest would vote for Reform UK or Restore Britain, which now have to decide whether or not to oppose a measure that was so strongly in their interest.

Browsing, History

Angela Rayner is calling on Keir Starmer to implement Kemi Badenoch’s policy of nationalising everyone’s children by banning under-16s from social media, thereby depriving them of the formative experience of their international peers while constantly forcing the rest of us to prove our ages by means of digital ID from Palantir and the Tony Blair Institute. The Government’s legislative programme would already give the vote to people on the day that they first became able to access any non-Epstein Class political opinion. This is all a great shame, because it has become obvious that Rayner had been thrown under the bus to ensure far less extensive legislation than was necessary and had been promised on the rights both of workers and of tenants. It also looks increasingly as if her removal was clearing the way for the attack on trial by jury and on the right of appeal.

Still, Rayner and Rishi Sunak were both born, less than two months apart, in 1980. Both were first time voters in 2001, the high water mark of Tony Blair. Sunak had been Head Boy of Winchester, and had still yet to do a day’s work in his life. Rayner had left school with literally nothing fully five years earlier, and was to make her way through her trade union. Make what you like of either of those backstories, but the fact that he was the first member of Generation Blair to become Prime Minister while she may yet be the second makes Blairism a spectacular failure in its own terms even before considering the fact that Badenoch, who was also born in 1980, never did a day of school in this country until she was 16. Education, Education, Education, indeed.

And here is Badenoch telling LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch also failed to mention that her Muslim grandmother had converted to Christianity. And even as, on the other side, the granddaughter of a Methodist minister, Badenoch claims to have taken part in Islamic Friday prayers, “because that was what happened there when I was in school.” Really? Like a lot of churchgoers in this country these days, I know Nigerian Christians, and again I ask, “Really?” Now, Badenoch may well have been naturalised, and as a Commonwealth citizen she would in any case be eligible to vote and stand in elections in this country and to hold office all the way up to Prime Minister. But that was not how she presented herself until 28 April 2026.

Restoration Comedy?

With her pork markets and her cheese, Liz Truss ought to have been laughed out of British politics in the manner of David Miliband and his banana. But although he was undeniably preposterous, Miliband, like the equally absurd Truss, did real damage, in his case as a torturer and in the Labour Right's long betrayal of the British Chagossians, with Miliband as the hinge between Denis Healey and David Lammy. And now, this very silly but very nasty man is clearly trying to get back. He is not the only one. Sue Gray has become an adviser to Andy Burnham, and Alan Milburn has used his latest gig to renew his call for "a wider set of reforms to state institutions", meaning privatisation in general and NHS privatisation in particular. Music to the ears of Wes Streeting.

Speaking of Chagos, though, it is Lord Hermer who is to review the non-custodial sentences handed down to three teenage boys who raped two girls at knifepoint and filmed it. Those boys are white, and there is no suggestion that they are immigrants. The almost unbelievably heavy Irish accents of many Irish Travellers in Britain are due to the closedness of their community. It is highly unlikely that teenagers in that community today were born in Ireland. Hermer sits in the Government that has had time to change the sentencing guidelines, yet which has failed to do so. But who was in office when those guidelines were issued, in whatever party they may find themselves these days?

For example, Reform UK, whose Leader, without having reported anything to the National Cyber Security Centre, blames a Russian hack for the disclosure of Christopher Harborne's five million pound gift to him, in which case that gift could not have been buying him much security. Or Restore Britain, which is on course to take more votes than the margin of victory between Burnham and Reform at Makerfield, but which is not contesting Aberdeen South, where the fight is between the SNP and the Conservatives. In his time at currently newsworthy Southampton Football Club, Rupert Lowe became so friendly with Rishi Sunak that he ended up in business with Sunak's wife. No one in the Conservative Party objected to Lowe's allocation of one of its seats, not just on any parliamentary committee, but on the mighty Public Accounts Committee. And on air, Lowe has told Jacob Rees-Mogg of the "agreement" between Restore and the Conservatives, describing himself, uncorrected by Rees-Mogg, as "a true Tory".

Restore's entire database is now in the hands of Scott Benton, who is telling canvassers in Makerfield to ignore Labour supporters and concentrate on taking votes from Reform. Is Benton now opposed to kosher slaughter? Then again, is Lowe still opposed to halal slaughter? It is not clear whether or not his son Angus has already married Yasmin Mezran, daughter of the Libyan Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Karim Mezran. If he has, then was halal meat served at the wedding feast? If he has not, then will it be? Over any refreshments, the happy couple's fathers either had, or will have, plenty to discuss, since, from his base on the Potomac, Mezran is a leading proponent of greater immigration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East, exemplified by his daughter. Would her father-in-law remigrate her? If not, why not?

One Spirit, One Body

American Pentecostal pastor: “When did your family become Christians?”

Palestinian Catholic priest: “On the Day of Pentecost.”

That exchange has happened at least once, because I was there. As one of mine for Catholic365 begins: “The whole Church was baptised with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, which we celebrate on Sunday, and She manifests that baptism through a rich plurality of gifts, the charisms. The whole Church, and thus every member, is therefore both Pentecostal and Charismatic. Every gift is a charism, and each is always given for the good of the whole body, in response to Her evangelistic activity, in the context of Her sacramental life, and subject to Her gift of discernment. She exercises that gift within Her institutional life, because the institutional Church and the charismatic Church are inseparable, being two aspects of a single reality.”

The Beautiful Game?

Like Tony Blair’s affected support for Newcastle United in his 24 years as the MP for a constituency that would have been evenly divided between Sunderland and Middlesbrough, Keir Starmer is off about how his beloved Arsenal United saw off the competition from Melchester Rovers and Earls Park, the Sparks. It is all very embarrassing.

As is being caught putting up decoy candidates. That has gone on forever, and especially against Independents, since anyone may use the one word “Independent”. But it used to be impossible to prove. Now, though, they make these arrangements on their phones.

Market Forces

There cannot be a single market in any of goods, services, capital or labour (i.e., people) unless there is a single market in all of them. The stocks are sold, the Press is squared, the middle class is quite prepared for the only thing even worse than being back in the EU, namely being bound by its rules without having so much as the tiniest say over their content. We are to be a colony, a satrapy, a vassal state, back in the Customs Union and in Margaret Thatcher’s Single Market. If Switzerland is indeed to be the model, then we are even going to be joining the Schengen Area.

There will of course be no referendum. We are ruled by people to whom the vote is a nice thing to have, but who got their way by other means every day, so they did not really need it. If 60 per cent of the laws to which they were subject were made without the formal participation of their elected representatives, well, those were still going to be the laws that they themselves wanted, because that was how the world worked. We have been telling you this forever.

Discover This

Neither Tony Benn, nor Michael Foot, nor Tam Dalyell, ever made the slightest attempt to modify his accent. Many a hero of the Left has come from a privileged background either in this country or elsewhere, and not least in India. Yet Daniel Sanderson writes:

A newly elected Scottish Green politician who claimed to be from a disadvantaged background in India in fact had a privileged upbringing, including attending an exclusive private school, it can be revealed.

Q Manivannan became a Holyrood MSP this month despite being on a student visa, meaning the politician may be forced to leave the country before the term ends.

Before being elected, Manivannan, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them, told party members that as a “queer Tamil immigrant” they would be a voice for the “working class and marginalised”.

On the campaign trail, Manivannan claimed a disadvantaged, “lower caste” background, implying that they were among the most marginalised groups in Indian society, and said at times that they were “hungry because I was starved”.

Shortly before being elected MSP for Edinburgh & Lothians East, Manivannan also claimed “[I had] saved and worked and lied and begged” to get a PhD, from the University of St Andrews, while loved ones back home faced the “full force of digital, infrastructural, carceral, and affective violence in India”.

However, an investigation by The Sunday Times has found that Manivannan comes from an upper middle-class household in Chennai, one of India’s wealthiest, most cosmopolitan cities. Although the Scottish Greens want to ban private schooling, Manivannan attended both private high school and university, and went on to run a subsidiary of an Indian business that coaches the children of the super-rich to access the world’s elite institutions.

Manivannan claimed to have been descended from “courtesans, dancers, musicians, hunters, and prostitutes”, but the MSP’s family has in fact held professional, high-status roles for at least two generations.

The politician’s father, Manivannan Dasarathi, a tennis champion in his youth, has degrees in chemical engineering and business administration. His public profile says he has “43 years [of] industrial experience in government and private sectors in senior management positions”, including running his own advisory firm since 2004.

Manivannan’s paternal grandmother ran a medical clinic, the MSP revealed in a blog. Manivannan’s mother, Rajachitra Manivannan, has a successful career in academia and the family’s maternal grandmother was a trailblazing gynaecologist who built a hospital in the town of Tirupattur, according to an online interview with Q Manivannan’s sister. It is understood that their parents are now retired.

The family’s success allowed Manivannan to benefit from a private education out of reach of the vast majority of Indians. The MSP did not discuss their own education in India on the campaign trail, and any schooling before St Andrews is absent from Manivannan’s public LinkedIn profile.

The MSP and the party’s press office did not provide details of Manivannan’s schooling when it was requested by The Times, which asked for the information from all MSPs.

Manivannan, who was born Srivatsan Manivannan before adopting the forename Q, attended Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram, a mid-range private school in Chennai, costing about £600 a year. Though the fees are modest compared with the UK, the average annual income in Manivannan’s home state is estimated to be about £3,200.

Students say it is one of the hardest institutions to get into in the city. It is known for impressive sports facilities and runs international excursions, which students fund themselves, such as trips to Nasa in the United States. Manivannan took full advantage of its extracurricular activities, running a school-linked Chennai debate club and founding a quiz club, according to public records and former students.

The MSP then went to OP Jindal Global University, in the state of Haryana, one of India’s best-known private liberal arts and law universities, taking a BA in liberal arts and humanities between 2015 and 2018.

The university caters to the upper-middle classes and is about 30 times more expensive on average than India’s more competitive, and prestigious, public universities. The total annual cost of a BA at the university, including tuition, accommodation and other extras, ranges from from £7,800 to £9,300, compared with under £300 on average at public universities.

A student from Haryana who studied at Ashoka University in Delhi, which serves a similar market, said: “It’s a fairly bougie university. Often it’s fancy kids who couldn’t go to colleges abroad who go to Ashoka and Jindal.” The student asked not to be named.

In 2019, Manivannan went to work at Essai Education, a high-end educational consultancy in Delhi that helps the children of India’s super-rich elite to get places at top international universities such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge.

Those who studied and worked with Manivannan in India described them as kind, conscientious and intelligent. A former colleague recalled the MSP fondly, saying Manivannan was “adorable”, “always smiling” and had a “great sense of humour”.

The job had been to assist “really high-end” clients whose teenage children would be dropped off at the offices in luxury cars by private drivers, they said.

Another former colleague at Essai said Manivannan had been “very justice orientated” helping to organise peaceful sit-in protests about a controversial citizenship law. The consultancy “paid insanely well”, she said.

Since leaving India, Manivannan has maintained close links with Essai and its subsidiary firm, Discover, which connects high school students with PhD researchers to boost their chances of getting into elite overseas boarding schools and universities.

A job advert Manivannan posted last year described Discover as “my research mentorship firm” and said the services it offered included “homework review/delivery” for high school students by PhD-level academics.

Manivannan will be obliged to declare any external income on the Holyrood register of interests. A source close to Manivannan said the MSP was now working with Discover in a voluntary and advisory role but had been phasing it out since the election.

The Scottish Tories said that members of the Scottish Greens, a party with a co-leader who unapologetically favours a ban on private education, might not have supported Manivannan’s candidacy in such high numbers had they known about this privileged upbringing and apparent interest in private education.

Despite having joined the Scottish Greens only in January last year, thanks to internal elections Manivannan was ranked third by members on the party’s candidate list in Edinburgh & Lothians East, where the party has its highest support, in July.

Under Holyrood’s electoral system, in which voters back a party rather than an individual with their second ballot, the number of votes cast for the Greens in Edinburgh & Lothians East was more than enough to get Manivannan a parliamentary seat.

In the candidate statement, the MSP described themselves as a “queer Tamil immigrant” and a “community organiser, teacher, and policy expert” who would fight for “radical change” for the marginalised working class.

A spokesman for the Scottish Tories said: “It appears that Q Manivannan has questions to answer after apparently pulling the wool over the eyes of the Scottish Greens.

“This new MSP wouldn’t be the first left-wing politician to embellish their supposedly working-class credentials to curry favour. But the public expect those they elect to be transparent and honest about their life before politics, rather than peddling false information about what they have done and where they came from.”

By 2020, Manivannan was in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin, studying for a Master of Philosophy in international peace studies. The following year they enrolled at St Andrews in Fife, and two months ago submitted a PhD thesis on “narrating anti-authoritarian resistance”, in pursuit of a doctorate in philosophy.

Dublin and St Andrews are two of the most notoriously expensive places to study as students in the UK and Ireland, outside of London. Fees for international students for the MPhil programme at Trinity are currently €18,720 (£16,200) per year. It is understood that Manivannan took out a loan to support their studies and received a scholarship that went towards undergraduate fees.

Manivannan’s older sister, Aishwarya, travelled to Edinburgh to watch them take the oath to become an MSP this month.

She founded what was described as “Chennai’s premier academy for art & design foundation studies, portfolio development, creative programs, and career mentoring” in 2012, which also offers bespoke private services to help students get into some of the world’s best visual arts institutions. Its headquarters is in the upmarket Adyar district of the city.

Aishwarya also benefitted from a private education, including a qualification from Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore, the leading institution of its kind in Asia. For non-funded, international students a BA programme costs about £22,000 per year. It is not known whether she received a scholarship.

Manivannan recently sent a message to Green members “begging for cash” to help pay for visa costs. An online crowdfunder set up by Manivannan, since deleted but seen by The Sunday Times, showed that £1,066 had been donated towards the £2,089 cost of applying for a graduate visa, which would allow another three years in Britain.

Manivannan made clear that they will apply for a longer-term global talent visa, which costs £5,049. The crowdfunder said “I already qualify for a global talent visa”, although independent experts questioned the claim, saying it was unlikely that the MSP would receive one under strict rules.

Although approval for a graduate visa is expected to be a formality, it would allow Manivannan to remain in the UK only until 2029. The Holyrood term runs until the spring of 2031.