Well, maybe its just me doing something wrong, but I never have a sniper alone on the field, unless its retreating from or to base.
In regards to brit sniper being able to defend itself, you can crit shot axis lights only if they are not aware of you, I don't need to tell you how long aim time for the ability is, if you know snipers position, you can be in range and on top of it faster then its able to crit shot you, which isn't that much of a challenge with kubels and 222 vet1 ability. It still applies exclusively to UKF sniper being along on the field, which I don't believe should happen, but maybe as I've said I don't know something you do.
That has nothing to do with the fact that the sniper can operate independently vs its own hard counter. Throwing a tommy or vickers next to it makes it even worse.
And thats the beauty of CAMO on SNIPERS. They can aim in camo, it isnt hard, so you will always get the jump on the 222. And soft retreating gives you camo back, so you can't even chase the sniper down with the 222, since you're stuck with an engine crit.
If you watch what proper brit sniper play is, it can be many things, either the sniper operating independently, with IS support (this is normal for all factions), or what becomes truly broken, the forked snipers. Two snipers working a decent distance from each other in parallel invalidate light vehicle play. One crits, soft retreats, the other shoots, the other comes back and shoots, and now you have a dead light vehicle. Getting two snipers is not hard either as Brits, the builds at high level are pretty cookie cutter, like what Paula does that I mentioned above. I do this every single game and have not had problems, and my games are not just against scrubs.