Leading article: Walkers rejoice!

Every now and again, we cast aside the conventions of journalism and offer unstinting praise to a politician. Today, David Miliband, Secretary of State for the Environment. He has decided to extend the right to roam by opening up the whole of England's coastline to walkers. This is a substantial extension of one of this Labour Government's most radical achievements.

The Independent on Sunday campaigned for the right to roam. We berated Mr Blair for his susceptibility to special pleading by landowners, which delayed the fulfilment of a manifesto promise. We rejoiced when it finally became law at the end of 2000, with no ifs, buts or voluntary agreements. And we hoped that it would be just the start, calling for coasts, forests and Ministry of Defence land to be added to the four million acres opened up by one of the labour movement's historic demands.

This decision has, therefore, been a long time coming. But now is not the time to dwell on the fences that were put up across its path by vested interests. We should simply praise Mr Miliband for rejecting, once again, the arguments of those interests that we should proceed by voluntary agreement and compensation. Nor should we dwell on Mr Miliband's motives for taking this decision now. We are aware that he is taking part in the celebrations later this month to mark the 75th anniversary of the mass trespass on Kinder Scout. We are aware, too, that his green credentials shine brightly. Indeed, as a strongly environmentalist newspaper, we have suspended journalistic disbelief to approve of him before. We admire the seriousness with which he has applied himself to the problem of climate change in the mere 11 months that he has held his current office.

We have also praised Tony Blair on this issue, even if his personal views on air travel seem fixed in the Laker Skytrain era. And we have praised David Cameron for going green, although we are dismayed by some inconsistencies of follow-through. Twelve days ago, for example, Mr Cameron allowed Conservative MPs a free vote on the rise in air passenger duty. He must have hoped no one would notice that many of his MPs voted against this important if imperfect green measure. Mr Miliband's extension of the right to roam is clever politics because it will test Mr Cameron's resilience against the Tories' landed interests. Yet the greyest of all our leading politicians is the one who will almost certainly be prime minister this summer. It will do Mr Miliband no harm at all to be greener than Gordon Brown, in the unlikely event that the front runner should stumble in the final furlong, or in the jostling for position in the new government.

That is for another day. Today, we come only to praise Mr Miliband and the Labour Government collectively for the common sense of its decision to widen the extent of the common land that is open to all.

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