The County class works better in Royal Navy terms

Should the County class be understood as a cut-down heavy cruiser?

No; the Royal Navy conceived it as a large light cruiser succeeding Town- and Hawkins-type ships, a frame in which the design makes more sense.

The class was planned after the treaty framework and emerged from British cruiser thinking rather than from a preexisting heavy-cruiser ideal. Evaluated as a long-range large light cruiser, its tradeoffs are coherent; evaluated only against a heavy-cruiser stereotype, they appear deficient.