Introduction: The Pattern You’re Not Supposed to See
Two shoppers stand in the same US supermarket aisle, at the same time, reaching for the same box of cereal. The first pays $3.99. The second is charged $4.89. Neither knows they’re guinea pigs in a vast algorithmic experiment designed to extract maximum profit from their grocery shopping.
This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. It’s happening right now in the United States, according to an explosive investigation published today by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union.
The infrastructure for the same system is being quietly rolled out across the UK right now
But here’s what connects the dots: this is just one manifestation of a broader “zonal” ideology that’s carving up Britain itself. From electricity pricing zones rejected in July 2025, to grocery pricing zones being deployed right now, to the 86 deregulated Special Economic Zones and Freeports already operational, to 200+ bids for AI Growth Zones announced in February, the pattern is unmistakable.
The UK is being subdivided into corporate fiefdoms where different rules, different prices, and different levels of democratic accountability apply depending on which “zone” you’re in. And Labour, who opposed much of this in opposition, is now accelerating it at breathtaking speed.
The US Investigation: $1,200 a Year in Hidden Costs
The research findings from the United States are damning. Across five separate tests involving 437 participants, investigators found that 74% of grocery items on Instacart had multiple price points, with some shoppers systematically shown higher prices than others. A dozen eggs at one store had five different prices ranging from $3.99 to $4.79. The same basket of groceries cost some shoppers $114.34 while others were shown $123.93 for identical items
The Human Cost?
Based on Instacart’s own estimates of how much a household spends on groceries, these price variations could cost families around $1,200 per year, more than a month’s rent in many American cities.
The technology behind this exploitation is called “dynamic pricing,” powered by AI algorithms that continuously experiment on unknowing consumers. In 2022, Instacart acquired a company called Eversight specifically to enable these pricing experiments. On its website, Instacart openly advertises the system’s ability to “continuously drive growth with dynamic pricing” by determining “which categories of products our customers are more price sensitive on.”
Most chillingly, the company’s own documentation states: “End shoppers are not aware that they’re in an experiment. For any given shopper in any given store, prices only change on a few of the products they shop and only by a small margin; it’s negligible. But at scale across a store network, those small changes create an orthogonal array of data points that changes the game.”
Translation: We’re experimenting on you, you won’t notice on any single shopping trip, but we’re making billions from the aggregated data.
UK Rollout: The Infrastructure Is Already Here
While UK consumers might feel insulated from American corporate practices, the reality is that the same technology is already being deployed in British supermarkets.
Morrisons announced in September 2025 that it will be the first UK retailer to deploy Instacart’s AI-powered “Caper Carts”, smart trolleys with digital screens that can display targeted offers based on your location in the store and your shopping history. The rollout begins in early 2026.
But Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs), the hardware that enables real-time price changes are already here. Morrisons has introduced them in select stores. Asda has completed trials of 25,000 products using ESLs. And according to industry reports, supermarkets across mainland Europe have embraced AI-driven dynamic pricing, with the technology “on the point of being rolled out in the UK.”
The stated justification is noble: reducing food waste by dynamically marking down perishable items. Yet the same infrastructure that enables discounts on expiring produce can just as easily enable the personalised price discrimination already documented in the United States.
The Zonal Electricity Precedent: Rejected in July, Resurrected for Groceries
Before examining how Labour facilitated this, it’s crucial to understand that the UK government already confronted, and abandoned, a strikingly similar scheme just five months ago.
In July 2025, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband scrapped plans for “zonal pricing” of electricity after three years of public outcry and industry opposition. The proposal would have divided Britain into regional electricity pricing zones, with households paying different amounts for their power depending on where they lived, regardless of usage, income, or ability to pay.
The parallels to algorithmic grocery pricing are impossible to ignore:
Zonal Electricity Pricing (Scrapped July 2025)
Different prices for the same product (electricity)
Based on location and supply/demand dynamics
Would have created “postcode lottery”
Justified as promoting efficiency and renewable investment
Dropped after concerns about fairness and regional inequality
Would have taken 7 years to implement
Faced fierce opposition from energy companies, regulators, and the public
Algorithmic Grocery Pricing (Being Deployed Now)
Different prices for the same product (groceries)
Based on location, behaviour, and algorithmic profiling
Creates “shopper lottery” where people in same aisle pay different amounts
Justified as reducing food waste and promoting efficiency
Being implemented with minimal public awareness or debate
Infrastructure already being rolled out
Limited opposition because most consumers don’t know it’s happening
The government concluded that zonal electricity pricing was too complex, too unfair, and too disruptive to implement. Yet they’re allowing an even more opaque and discriminatory pricing system for groceries, a daily essential, to be built with far less scrutiny.
The steel industry warned that zonal pricing would damage competitiveness. Trade unions, manufacturers, and major energy companies opposed it. The government listened and reversed course.
Where is the equivalent outcry over grocery pricing? And most damningly: where is Ed Miliband, who scrapped zonal pricing on fairness grounds, while his Cabinet colleague Rachel Reeves installs a former Amazon executive to oversee the regulator investigating algorithmic pricing?
The pattern is unmistakable: “zonal pricing” was rejected for electricity because it would charge people different prices based on where they live. But “dynamic pricing” is being embraced for groceries even though it charges people different prices based on who they are and how algorithms profile them.
The Amazon Connection: Regulatory Capture in Real Time
Here’s where the story takes an even darker turn. In January 2025, just weeks before the Instacart investigation was published, Chancellor Rachel Reeves made a stunning appointment: Doug Gurr, Amazon UK’s former country manager, was installed as interim chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
This is the same Doug Gurr who spent nine years at Amazon, including running UK operations from 2016 to 2020, precisely the period when Amazon was perfecting its dynamic pricing algorithms. He’s now in charge of the very regulator investigating the cloud computing market where Amazon Web Services dominates.
The appointment came immediately after Reeves summoned regulators to a meeting where they were told to “tear down the barriers hindering business” and “refocus their efforts on promoting growth.” The outgoing chair, Marcus Bokkerink, was reportedly pushed out because he didn’t “share the mission” of prioritising business interests over consumer protection.
The timing is remarkable: Gurr took over just as the CMA was conducting an investigation into dynamic pricing practices across the UK economy, launched in November 2024. With a former Amazon executive now chairing the regulator, serious questions arise about whether meaningful enforcement will follow.
Trade unions called the appointment “a slap in the face to workers.” Open Markets Institute warned it was “a major strategic blunder that will harm, not help, growth and innovation in the UK.” Two dozen organisations signed a letter expressing concern that “the UK Government is losing sight of its commitment to robust competition enforcement.”
Marcus Bokkerink himself warned against competition authorities becoming “vulnerable to short-term expediency or vested interests”—seemingly a direct comment on his own removal.
Rachel Reeves: From Critic to Enabler
The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Just five years ago, in 2020, Rachel Reeves wrote a pamphlet explicitly naming Amazon, Google, and Facebook as “monopolies of platform capitalism” that “block competitive markets, avoid taxation and impose oppressive control over their employees.”
Today, her government is putting one of Amazon’s own executives in charge of regulating the very practices she once condemned. The woman who wrote about corporate monopolies blocking competitive markets has appointed a former Amazon executive to oversee competition policy at the precise moment when AI-driven algorithmic pricing threatens to eliminate transparent, competitive pricing altogether.
When challenged about the appointment, Reeves stated only that the CMA needed to be led by someone who shared the government’s “strategic direction.” That direction, it appears, is away from consumer protection and toward facilitating the same corporate profiteering she once opposed.
The Bigger Picture: The Zonal Carve-Up of Britain
But grocery pricing and the CMA appointment are just symptoms of a much larger structural transformation that’s been hidden in plain sight. The UK is being systematically carved up into “deregulated free zones” where corporations operate under different rules than the rest of the country.
The Free Zones Rollout: 86 Corporate Fiefdoms
The Tory government initiated 12 Freeports and 74 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) across the UK. Keir Starmer, while in opposition, said freeports were not a “silver bullet for the economy” and Labour MPs called them a “failed Thatcherite plan.”
Yet behind closed doors, Labour signed off on every single one. Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, a Labour politician, signed off on Liverpool’s SEZ/Freeport status with the Tories, as did Andy Burnham with the Manchester SEZ Kate Forbes of the SNP signed off with Michael Gove on the free zones rollout for Scotland, while former FM Mark Drakeford of Wales signed off with Rishi Sunak for free zones in Wales, one of the signings was attended by Shanker Singham in Ynys Mon, Anglesey, known as the brains behind Brexit, Singham also developed an entire (de)regulatory framework for UK free zones at Babson University in the US. Labour MP, councillors, mayors, Lords, and Baronesses sat on freeport boards across the country
Then in June 2025, Starmer’s government officially merged the Tories’ freeports and SEZs into “Industrial Strategy Zones” (ISZs) under their Industrial Strategy Zones Action Plan. This wasn’t a rejection of the Tory policy—it was an acceleration and consolidation of it.
What Are Free Zones?
These are designated areas where business and trade laws differ from the rest of the country. They offer:
10-year tax holidays for corporations
25-year licenses (set by Jeremy Hunt)
£160 million in state aid per SEZ (£11.84 billion total)
Streamlined planning permissions
Reduced environmental oversight
“Self-regulation” by companies
In Teesside, the flagship Brexit Freeport has spent £560 million of taxpayers’ money, with profits split 9/10 in favour of the private sector. The Tees Valley Combined Authority has been put into special measures for lack of transparency.
The AI Growth Zones: The Digital Layer
In January/February 2025, Starmer launched “AI Growth Zones” as part of his AI Opportunities Action Plan to make Britain an “AI superpower.” By April 2025, 200 local authorities had submitted bids for their areas to become AI Growth Zones.
These zones offer:
Streamlined planning for AI data centres
Sites with at least 500MW of power capacity
“Regulatory flexibility”
Fast-tracked approvals bypassing normal democratic processes
AI Growth Zones are explicitly included in the ISZ framework as the “digital layer” of deregulated zoning. They’re not separate from the freeports and SEZs, they’re part of the same zonal carve-up.
The Brexit Connection: Why EU State Aid Rules Mattered
Here’s the crucial piece that explains why Brexit was necessary for this agenda:
The EU strictly regulates state aid to prevent member states from allocating public subsidies to companies as a profit motive. Article 107 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union classifies state aid that distorts competition as illegal. The European Commission enforces this to ensure a level playing field in the Single Market.
The EU has 82 ports and special zones, but they are publicly owned and tightly regulated to prevent exactly what’s happening in the UK: corporations receiving massive public subsidies while operating under reduced regulation and accountability.
Brexit freed the UK from these rules. Post-Brexit, things defaulted to World Trade Organization rules, allowing the government to provide state aid to any company they chose, creating the “unlevel playing field” that would be illegal and antithetical to the EU’s Single Market.
This is why Keir Starmer says “There will be no rejoining the EU in my lifetime.” Labour and the Tories both know that the zonal carve-up of the UK, with its massive state aid packages to corporations, is fundamentally incompatible with EU membership.
As I have documented extensively over the years, Brexit was not primarily about immigration or sovereignty in the democratic sense. It was about freeing the UK from regulations that prevented this corporate restructuring of the entire country.
The Infrastructure Pattern
Look at the pattern:
Physical Zones: 86 Freeports/SEZs with different tax, regulatory, and governance rules
Digital Zones: 200+ AI Growth Zone bids for data centre infrastructure with “regulatory flexibility”
Pricing Zones: Electronic shelf labels enabling algorithmic price discrimination in groceries
Energy Zones: Proposed (but rejected) for electricity, now being implemented through data centre “targeted pricing support” in specific regions
The UK is being divided into overlapping zones where:
Corporations get 10-year tax holidays and 25-year licenses
Different prices apply for the same products
Different regulations apply for environmental protection, worker rights, and planning
Different levels of democratic accountability and transparency exist
Public money flows to private companies with minimal oversight
This is not a series of unrelated policies. It’s a coordinated transformation of how the UK economy is structured, away from transparent, regulated markets under democratic control, and toward a zonal system where corporations govern themselves within designated territories.
