Surpass the previous likely winner's speech (6)
I believe the answer is:
exceed
'surpass' is the definition.
(I know that surpass can be written as exceed)
'previous likely winner's speech' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'previous' could be 'ex' (prefix meaning former or onetime) and 'ex' is found in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'the' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for exceed that I've seen before include "Better" , "Go beyond - top" , "Bud used as spice" , "Beat" , "Outperform" .)