Paying to avoid cookeies?

Well at least it's computer related, so I read something that the online version of The Daily Express newspaper have introduced a model that allows you either to read it for free but then you must accept being tracked with cookies or pay a subscription of £2 per-month to avoid them. There have been some comments about whether that's allowed under GDPR (the UK is still signed up although I'm surprised our last government didn't scrap it as party of EU meddling*) and why on earth would any pay to read that awful rag**?
Putting those aside my first thought was that's ridiculous but my second thought was why is it if you're getting a service for free then is it really that unreasonable to make you pay for it indirectly in the same way you can pay not to see ad's. So yeh why not although maybe it's a sign of things to come?
*The did try and introduce the British Standard Mark to replace CE marking as that was a nasty EU thing so we should have our own. After a long time they quietly shelved the idea after businesses kept pointing out that only introduces more red tape, and hence expense, for any company that sells anything abroad. But, but, but why wouldn't they accept it as we're British which is a mindset that quite a few of our last government actually held as they didn't seem to realise that we are no longer in the 1800's.
**Not sure how well that translate outside of the UK but it refers to a newspaper that you consider crap.