The problem of one establishment out of many should never be a yardstick in judging others. For me, these banks are anti-crypto and their actions are high level of hypocrisy.
Most of these UK banks has political affiliation or connection. They will always do the bidding of the political class. The political class wants to control everything about the citizens including how they keep or save their own money. Banks like Nationwide are placing some restrictions like not allowing customers to buy cryptocurrency with debit or credit cards. They have also restricted the amount that can be transacted using cryptos. Their common excuse will be that they are protecting citizens from scams or loss of funds caused by the fall of exchanges.
This one, just like in the US wherein Biden and his political cohorts are in power, and so their hard line stance against bitcoin, just like what we are seeing in Gary Gensler of SEC. So there is politics behind all of this, and maybe UK is not immune to this.
If the government really wants to protect its citizens from fraudulent exchanges, it should promote awareness programs that encourage citizens to use decentralized platforms to engage in bitcoin transactions. FTX will always be the defense of the government in its selfish quest to silence crypto.
They are just hiding their real intentions with this excuses. There are a lot of politicians who benefited from SBF that's why it takes time for the US government to hand him down the verdict.
There is also another related thread:
UK Crypto, Stablecoin Rules Receive Royal Assent, Passing Into Law.