Rescue former lover and Conservative wearing strange attire (9)
I believe the answer is:
extricate
'rescue' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'lover and conservative wearing strange attire' is the wordplay.
'lover' becomes 'ex' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'conservative' becomes 'c' (abbreviation commonly used in UK politics).
'wearing' is an insertion indicator.
'strange' indicates anagramming the letters.
'attire' anagrammed gives 'triate'.
'c' placed into 'triate' is 'tricate'.
'ex'+'tricate'='EXTRICATE'
'former' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. It may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for extricate that I've seen before include "wriggle free" , "Free (someone) from difficulty" , "Disentangle, release from difficulty" , "get out from difficult situation" , "Get free from" .)