An electrical conductor contains charged particles that are able to move throughout

the substance. These particles are commonly electrons (as in metals) or ionised
particles suspended in a solution (as in salt water) - I will refer to both as
'ions' from here on.

When an electro-motive force (voltage) is applied to the conductor, the charges

will move towards the terminal opposing their charge (i.e. negatively charged
electrons will travel towards the positive terminal). In a closed circuit, these
ions will be replaced by other ions flowing from the voltage source. The moving
charges are the current.

Basically, a conductor is just a substance that has free-moving ions, allowing a

force applied to ions at one end to ripple through it and cause a current to flow.
An analogy would be a water pipe: as the water is able to move freely in the pipe,
any force on the water at one end of the pipe will cause water to flow out the
other end. However, if the water was frozen (analogous to an insulator, where there
are no free-moving charges), a force applied at one end would not result in any
water being expelled from the other end - until the force became great enough to
punch a hole through the ice (analogous to breakdown voltage).