Bring up former lover, Northern Irish politician (6)
I believe the answer is:
exhume
'bring up' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with social activities as well as being verbs in their base form.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'former lover northern irish politician' is the wordplay.
'former lover' becomes 'ex' (an ex-lover).
'northern irish politician' becomes 'hume' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ex'+'hume'='EXHUME'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for exhume that I've seen before include "Disinter a dead body" , "opposite of 5 [ENTOMB]" , "Dig up (a corpse)" , "Dig up, unearth" , "Reveal" .)