Serious defeat embraced by Conservative, one in the soup? (7)
I believe the answer is:
crouton
'one in the soup?' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether this works.
'serious defeat embraced by conservative' is the wordplay.
'serious defeat' becomes 'rout' (rout is a kind of defeat. I am not sure about the 'serious' bit.).
'embraced by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'conservative' becomes 'con' (abbreviation for Conservative).
'rout' placed within 'con' is 'CROUTON'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for crouton that I've seen before include "lands in the soup" , "fried food" , "Piece of fried bread for garnishing" , "Fried bread as garnish" , "Small cube of fried bread" .)