Leader's spoken about independence, following rising trend (9)
I believe the answer is:
editorial
'following rising trend' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'leader's spoken about independence' is the wordplay.
'leader' becomes 'edit' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'spoken' becomes 'oral' ('oral' can be similar in meaning to 'spoken').
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'independence' becomes 'i'.
'oral' going around 'i' is 'orial'.
'edit'+'orial'='EDITORIAL'
(Other definitions for editorial that I've seen before include "Article giving a newspaper's opinion" , "Article that states a newspaper's opinion" , "bit of paper" , "Statement of a newspaper's opinion" , "paper item" .)