Sheepish sound from Liberal in heavy defeat (8)
I believe the answer is:
bleating
'sheepish sound from liberal in heavy defeat' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'sound from liberal in heavy defeat' is the wordplay.
'sound' becomes 'bleat' (bleat is a kind of sound).
'from' says to put letters next to each other.
'liberal in heavy defeat' becomes 'ing' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'bleat'+'ing'='BLEATING'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for bleating that I've seen before include "Tangible (anag) -- animal noise" , "Crying (like a lamb?)" .)