Vanstone lost leadership to Republican by playing foreign language (8)
I believe the answer is:
mandarin
'language' is the definition.
(Mandarin is an example)
'vanstone lost leadership to republican by playing foreign' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'republican' could be 'r' (abbreviation) and 'r' is found in the answer.
'playing' could be 'in' and 'in' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for mandarin that I've seen before include "Official language for all of China" , "Chinese official - fruit" , "Small orange or Chinese language" , "Form of Chinese" , "top official" .)