Popular and hard unionist chap getting brutal (7)
I believe the answer is:
inhuman
'brutal' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'popular and hard unionist chap' is the wordplay.
'popular' becomes 'in'.
'and' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'hard' becomes 'h'.
'unionist' becomes 'u' (abbreviation as in Democratic Unionist Party).
'chap' becomes 'man' (I've seen this before).
'in'+'h'+'u'+'man'='INHUMAN'
'getting' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for inhuman that I've seen before include "Beastly" , "Callously cruel" , "barbarous and brutal" , "Nasty" , "Savage, brutal" .)