Leader of English gathers backing and respect (6)
I believe the answer is:
esteem
'respect' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'leader of english gathers backing' is the wordplay.
'leader of' suggests taking the first letters.
'gathers' becomes 'meets' ('meet' can be a synonym of 'gather').
'backing' says the letters should be written in reverse.
The first letter of 'english' is 'e'.
'meets' back-to-front is 'steem'.
'e'+'steem'='ESTEEM'
'and' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for esteem that I've seen before include "Admire - honour" , "Value highly" , "Think well of" , "judge" , "Count" .)