I'm referring to the UK, specifically. As you probably remember, I don't even live there, but it still bugs me.
EU is trying something silly like this too, but only for social media counter-privacy for now.
That's what I thought. Imagine how bad the world must be for Trump to be the leader of the free world, telling off both the UK and EU leaders on this issue. In both cases, they have pushed CBDCs (although according to the latest news, it seems that the BoE is abandoning the project), which means control of all population spending, and since they like control, they want to control the internet as well. In the UK, two-tier policing is particularly outrageous, where (especially if you are a native white person) a tweet or Facebook post criticizing immigration will cost you more jail time than an immigrant committing a violent crime.
You won't see a libertarian government, such as Argentina's, banning VPNs at all, but these type of governments want to control what people do on the internet so they hate VPNs.