Is there a strategic advantage to what happened yesterday?

Obviously we all wanted the government to lose in the Commons yesterday, but now that they haven't, I'm trying to work out whether in the long run that will prove to be good or bad news for the SNP and the wider cause of independence.  As they say about the French Revolution, it's probably too early to tell.  The case for arguing that it might be good news is that it makes Theresa May's survival as PM more likely (I know, I know, but bear with me), which in turn makes a general election late this year or early next year less likely, thus making any decision to press ahead with an independence referendum next year much less complicated.  But the counter-argument is that now the power-grab story has finally broken through into the public consciousness, the SNP would have had a fearsome weapon with which to fight an early general election - one that simply wasn't available to them last time around.  If they had made gains rather than losses in an election, that would have set them up perfectly for the calling of a referendum shortly thereafter.

So you pays your money and you takes your choice.  I note, incidentally, that there is a great deal of smugness and complacency in many part of the London media about how the Tory government will sail through the vote on Heathrow expansion next week due to the support of the SNP.  My own view, for what it's worth, is that whatever the merits or demerits of a third runway, the SNP should be pursuing a policy of total non-cooperation with the government until and unless the power-grab is reversed.