Tale of a Conservative at his wits' end (5)
I believe the answer is:
story
'tale' is the definition.
(I know that tale can be written as story)
'a conservative at his wits' end' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'conservative' could be 'tory' (informal term for a Conservative Party member) and 'tory' is present in the answer.
A single letter 's' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for story that I've seen before include "Account, tale" , "See 10 and 19" , "Rumour" , "Narrative or account" , "Narration" .)