YOU know that test that psychologists do? The one where they say something, a word or a phrase, and you have to say the first thing that comes into your head? It’s designed to get at your instincts and prejudices before you have time to think too hard, and it’d be interesting, wouldn’t it, to try the same kind of thing with Britain’s politicians. Try it with me now. What’s the first thing you think of when I say “Boris Johnson” or “Michael Gove” or “Nigel Farage”. Not pretty is it?

But what if the name I mentioned to you was Jo Swinson? What’s your reaction then, I wonder? I only ask because I interviewed the Lib Dem leader the other day and what struck me was the response many people had when I mentioned her name. I wasn’t conducting a poll obviously, but there was a lot of negative reaction. There was also some personal stuff about the way Ms Swinson looks or sounds.

Horrible though such criticism is, it might be useful to try to find some of the reasons for it, particularly after the hateful week we’ve just had in politics. Ms Swinson herself stood up in the Commons on Wednesday and said she had been forced to call the police after receiving threats against one of her children, underlining what a bad destination politics has reached. However, the good news is that I think some of what Ms Swinson said to me - as well as what people said to me about Ms Swinson - might point to a possible, more positive way forward.

READ MORE: Jo Swinson: Scottish nationalism is the same as English nationalism 

But first, I should tell you, with apologies to Ms Swinson, some of the things people said to me about the Lib Dem leader. Things like, she’s a politician and has never been anything else, or she’s uppity, or high-handed, or she went to a nice school, or she was a head girl and still is, or she’s middle class, or I don’t like her accent. Much of it seemed to be about three common British (and Scottish) obsessions - class, education and achievement - that are often revealed by a fourth: the way you speak.

Anyone with a working knowledge of political history knows, of course, that those issues aren’t new and they have always explained why some politicians have been hated or disliked. Margaret Thatcher for instance. She was of a certain class and talked a certain way and it wound some people up big time, especially some Scots. But what’s different now is that, although the hate still sounds the same, it has a new source. The people who railed against Jo Swinson to me turned out to be either Scottish nationalists, or Brexiteers, or both. In other words, they were on one side and saw Jo Swinson as being on the other. Hence the hate.

But this is where we are now, sadly, thanks to referendums, and two referendums in particular: the 2014 one on Scottish independence and the 2016 one on the EU. In our interview, Ms Swinson described those votes as being like two axes cutting the country into distinct groups and it’s led to a situation where we listen to what people are saying but all we can hear is “leave”, “remain”, “yes” or “no”.

There is some hope for improvement, though, and Ms Swinson pointed to the answer herself when we talked about the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum. Compare it to 2014 and 16, she said. In the 90s, there was a long period of engagement on devolution over several years, different parties came together, you had a “national conversation” that tried to find consensus, and it was then put to the people not in a way that was trying to settle a divisive issue but to confirm something that had already been done to create a consensus.

Ms Swinson’s assessment of the 97 vote is well-founded – and besides, it was confirmed by what happened after the referendum when the new status quo was quickly accepted in Scotland, even by those who fought to stop it. Effectively, there was a working consensus leading to a peaceful resolution in 1997, in grim contrast to 2014 and 2016 - nasty struggles in which the two sides went on fighting after the end of the war.

READ MORE: Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson calls in police over threat to her child 

The side effect of it all now, I’m afraid, is the intense hatred and dislike many people feel for the other side. The logic for many, although it’s more like instinct, is “You are Yes or No, Leave or Remain, therefore I hate you”, and Jo Swinson and others are casualties of that. The obvious answer is for politicians to try to build alliances on other issues. But we also have to try to do with future referendums what we did in 1997. Build a consensus. Hold a referendum to make sure it’s what people really think. Search for a peace deal to avoid a war starting in the first place.