A Conservative professed to be praised (9)
I believe the answer is:
acclaimed
'praised' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both to do with communicating as well as being past participle verbs.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'a conservative professed' is the wordplay.
'conservative' becomes 'C' (UK political abbreviation).
'professed' becomes 'claimed' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'a'+'c'+'claimed'='ACCLAIMED'
'to be' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for acclaimed that I've seen before include "Highly respected" , "Hailed, heralded" , "Strongly praised" .)