This article offers a response to some recent critiques of character education in a UK context, in general, and the approach promoted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, in particular. The article argues that critiques of current UK character education betray an inadequate grasp of significant factions within its group of advocates, and that there is reason to question the suggested idea of a single policy network. More specifically, claims that the Jubilee Centre's conception of character is neoliberal, conservative, individualist and religiously tethered are rebutted. At a more abstract level, the critics are shown to misrepresent the underlying philosophy of the Centre's character conception: neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics.