However our corporation tax and income tax is actually much lower than our neighbours' particularly

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However, our corporation tax and income tax is actually much lower than our neighbours', particularly in the Scandinavian countries. So I think there is definitely room for an expansion in the tax burden on the rich."This is, after all, he continues without apparent irony, "a socialist government that has a majority of nearly 170, and so, politically, that should be possible. There are fewer than 300,000 people in the country who earn more than Â£100,000. That's not a huge percentage of the population, so electorally I don't think it would be unpopular. It's not the people of Middle England, whom New Labour court, who earn that much."None of which will be music to his father's ears. Nor can have been Will's recent letter to The Guardian that ended: "The Government's higher-education policy is now a complete shambles, and the sooner it gets a grip on it, the better." Nor his verdict of, "That's a joke!", when Labour last week decided to reintroduce student maintenance grants – at a paltry Â£1,000 for students from families with a combined income of under Â£10,000.And yet, if you'd expect that all this firebrand stuff would make his fellow-student activists regard Will as Mr Popular, think again.

On Friday, he was busy fighting off a personal motion of censure in his own union after sending a letter to the Vice-Chancellor that appeared to suggest that Gordon Brown's alternative of a new "graduate tax" to fund universities was the lesser of two evils. Official union policy opposes both.So, what exactly does he think of the idea of a graduate tax? He chooses his words with extra care. "We're opposed to a graduate tax because it makes graduates pay twice – if they're earning a lot, they'll be higher-rate taxpayers, so why should they have to pay a graduate tax, too? The normal income-tax system should be enough." He is looking over his shoulder, you sense, to avoid being condemned as "too pragmatic", "too ready to make concessions", or "not bona fide left-wing" – to borrow a few of the phrases of his critics.Of those, he has plenty. Friday's censure motion – which he defeated handsomely by 70 votes to 20 – was not the first. There was one in November, over claims that he had said that it was fruitless for the union to campaign to change the ultra vires law, which was set down by the Government to ensure that student unions only spend their money promoting student issues. Not long before that, he was threatened, even more seriously, with a vote of no confidence that could have lost him his post as one of the union's six sabbatical officers.That one came directly out of the fact of his father's position as Foreign Secretary.

Oxford students were divided over whether or not the union should take a stance on the threat of war on Iraq. Will Straw announced that he didn't want to be involved in the debate for personal reasons. "I don't think anybody would expect me to put my job before my family," he said. But some students did."Some people, including me, believe that the student union is most effective when it concentrates on campaigning for students," he now says. "Others insist that it should have a view on issues of world importance, too."But it was more than that. The trouble was that Straw didn't just say that he wouldn't take part in any debate on Iraq. He said that he would refuse to sign any letters about it on the union's behalf.