Commonwealth figure in the Promised Land! (8)
I believe the answer is:
canadian
'commonwealth' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how they can define each other.
'figure in the promised land' is the wordplay.
'figure' becomes 'di' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'in the' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'promised land' becomes 'canaan' (I've seen this before).
'di' put inside 'canaan' is 'CANADIAN'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for canadian that I've seen before include "Can Diana be a strange North American?" , "'One from Montreal or Toronto, say (8)'" , "From the world's second largest country" , "A countryman" , "Nationality of citizen of Vancouver" .)