The home secretary’s team are delighted at the newspaper headlines and TV coverage their announcements have secured in recent days, yet they know that was the easy bit.
Persuading Labour MPs from all wings of the party to vote en masse for the plans is a far bigger challenge.
Backbench frustration over winter fuel payments and welfare reform led to embarrassing government U-turns. Will restive Labour MPs try to shift government policy yet again?
That may depend on whether a politician’s constituency is under threat from Reform UK and Conservatives on the right, or the Liberal Democrats and Greens on the left.
Some ministers are already raising concerns about Mahmood’s proposals in private, and sceptical MPs have started to speak out in public.
Rachael Maskell, a prominent critic of the government’s botched welfare reforms, told me many of her colleagues are “seriously concerned”.
She said the government is going in “completely the wrong direction” on immigration and its plans to change how human rights law is applied in the UK are a “step too far”.
Another sceptical Labour MP, Brian Leishman, told me he had “big reservations” about the proposals, and cautioned ministers against “trying to copy Farage and Reform who only want to demonise people”.
