Second old conservative admitted to feeling we're making no progress (4,2,6,3)
I believe the answer is:
back to square one
'feeling we're making no progress' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I cannot judge whether this works.
'second old conservative admitted to' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'second' could be 'back' (to second a motion is to back it) and 'back' is found within the answer.
'old' could be 'o' (common abbreviation eg in OE for Old English) and 'o' is present in the answer.
'conservative' could be 'square' (I've seen this before) and 'square' is present in the answer.
'to' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'ne' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for back to square one that I've seen before include "Ready to start all over again" , "having landed on a snake?" , "no further forward?" , "Start from scratch" , "when you'd gone right round the board" .)