The 21-year-old Scottish Greens candidate for Glasgow North speaks to Dazed about her views on Keir Starmer, why all leftists should support electoral reform, and how socialism could come to Britain
Many 21-year-olds have political ambitions, but few are already on the ballot paper fighting a general election as a parliamentary candidate. But Iris Duane is standing for the Green Party in Glasgow North, and hoping to become the first trans woman of colour in Parliament.
Having grown up in West Yorkshire, Duane joined the Scottish Greens shortly after relocating for university. She now describes Glasgow North as her home constituency. A Politics and Social Policy student at the University of Glasgow, Duane has already made history on campus. After running a progressive campaign – including pledges to lobby for drug testing kits for students and stand against investments in the arms trade – Duane became the first openly transgender person to be elected as a sabbatical officer in the university’s 600-year history.
Voted in by her manifold student supporters – many of whom occupy a sprawling group chat named ‘The Duane Train Campaign’ – Duane has since raised her profile beyond the confines of campus. Late last year, Young Women Scotland featured her in their ‘30 under 30’ list, recognising her persistent campaigning efforts to get the university to adopt the EmilyTest gender-based violence prevention charter. “Part of the reason I’m running for election is so I can take the policy experience I already have down to Westminster”, Duane tells Dazed.
“I didn’t really get into politics, politics got into me,” she continues. “I belong to quite a few minority groups, which means a lot of my life has been defined by what the posh boys are doing down south. I didn’t have a choice.” Ahead of polling day, we spoke to Duane about feeling let down by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, why electoral reform and socialism go hand-in-hand, and the ongoing fight for trans rights in Britain.
Should more young people run for Parliament?
Iris Duane: Yes. I find it funny when people tell me I have no life experience because of my age. I feel like I’ve lived hundreds of lives! I’ve survived significantly longer than I ever thought I would. Age should never be used to denigrate people who have unique life experiences, including people my age who have the opposite views to me. They still have a story to tell. Our political culture has for too long emphasised rich – and often white – men. Sure, they deserve a place in Parliament, but so do poor, young people in Britain. We should all sit at the table as equals.
Why have you chosen to stand for the Scottish Greens?
Iris Duane: I love that we’re 100 per cent democratic. All our policies and priorities are decided at conferences, meetings and EGMs. Everyone has an equal say, whether you’re a regular member or a member of the Scottish Parliament. As Lorna Slater, our co-leader, said recently, the leaders are essentially spokespeople for the members. Some political parties focus too heavily on the experiences of the privileged, or they just do what the leader’s office says. We’re not like that as a movement.
That sounds like a dig at Labour…
Iris Duane: It’s funny – I’m Black, from Northern England, queer, working-class and from a single-parent household. It’s expected people like me would join Labour. But since I was young, I’ve seen them for what they are – a movement that keeps the working class in their place but doesn’t uplift them.
This is the only Labour party in the developed world that doesn’t believe in electoral reform. It is a very unique Labour party, because it covets its power more than it respects its people. It has strayed very far from its democratic socialist history.
Do you think Keir Starmer will be as bad as the Conservatives?
Iris Duane: Yes, if not potentially worse. Just look at the harmful cultural norms Starmer has presided over inside his party, be it transphobia or institutional racism. I don’t hate the Labour Party; I think hate is a very strong word. But I am incredibly disappointed in them as a political force. Labour governments in the past have put through progressive policies, but I don’t see things getting much better under a Starmer government.
We all know the Tories are awful. For the next five years, though, the people we thought stood against awful things will tell us to put up and shut up because Keir Starmer has a red rosette on him. Progressive realism is just more of the same broken international order. Securonomics is just austerity. I don’t care whether it’s a Tory or a Labour Prime Minister enforcing austerity – I don’t want austerity, full stop.
You describe yourself as a socialist. What do you think it takes for the British state to move more substantially leftwards?
Iris Duane: It will hinge on having some sort of proportional representation in Parliament, but also left-wing movements uniting together to discard the current system. On current polling, Keir Starmer will get fewer votes than other prime ministers since 1997, yet he could take about 75 per cent of the Commons. Surely that’s the end of British democracy? We might also have record numbers of non-voters, and the Reform Party getting up to 20 per cent of the vote. This terrifying, emergent right-wing force is further evidence of the failure of neoliberalism to deliver for communities. I believe these issues cannot be addressed by single-party governments or single-party majorities – it needs to be done cross-party. I will work with anyone to do what’s best for my community.
“I find it funny when people tell me I have no life experience because of my age. I feel like I’ve lived hundreds of lives” – Iris Duane
A lot of your professional output takes place on social media platforms, but you’ve faced awful abuse for it. How do you manage?
Iris Duane: It’s been happening since I was about 16. When I was younger, it was harder to deal with. You’re still a child, really. These days I don’t want to see it, so I just turn off my notifications. It’s a shame – I should be able to use social media like any normal person, but I have to be a bit more careful. I’ve received credible death threats in the past. It has impacted other students, they see how horrendous and vitriolic it can be, and I find that really difficult.
I said when I announced my candidacy: I’m more than happy to debate people online about policy, to be challenged. Let’s bring data to the table, because how can you have effective politics without it? But I will not tolerate abuse for being transgender, for being bisexual. In the offline professional world, these things, at least explicitly, don’t often come up.
Sometimes I do bring myself down, especially when I got elected to be a sabbatical officer, because there were hundreds upon hundreds of people wishing harm upon me. I think that’s very strange to comprehend. At times I feel somewhat sad for the people doing it. They don’t see me as a human being, on the other side of the phone. I don’t tweet things out and stop existing – I have feelings, I have friends, hobbies. We’ve been turned into a bit of a caricature sometimes.
You’re starting a political career at a time of increasing hostility towards trans people. How has that impacted you?
Iris Duane: I try to ignore it as much as I can. But when the Cass report was released, for example, it became incredibly isolating. You’ve got everything going on in your normal life – you’re eating one meal a day, you can’t afford to heat your flat – then you go on your phone and see government ministers have decided, because of their failings, they need to do something to make headlines.
As much as we’re made to look like this massive group who are going to ‘trans your kids’ or invade your toilets, there aren’t many of us and often we don’t share anything in common. Polling demonstrates very few people are really concerned about trans issues. This election campaign shows it’s not working for the Tories. So it’s even more disappointing that the Labour Party aren’t standing up to it – the party founded on solidarity has decided to seed cultural issues to the Tories and let them set the tone.
We’ve gone backwards as a country – this is not the same social environment we had in 2017. And I think things will get worse before they get better. I know I will survive to tell the story, and when it’s another group in ten or so years, whoever they are, I’m proud to say I’ll stand in solidarity with them, in the same way allies have stood in solidarity with me.
It is funny, however, to look back at the coverage of trans issues before we entered this massive moral panic stage. Often it’s incredibly positive, or it’s more about fascination, which reflects what I find when I talk about trans issues with people in real life. I think it’s important we focus on what’s actually destroyed the state – the cost of living crisis, inflation, Liz Truss crashing the economy – instead of going after minority groups.