Should resist ... but can't.
It seems there are some well-established, popular, very good, events which, on close analysis of their route, are flawed in terms of distance, coming in well under the stated 200km or whatever. Really, no-one wants to lose these events or organisers.
What tended to happen in the good ol' days was that AUK had a single 'events' obergruppenfuhrer who might have a conversation about this with the organiser and then pass the event on a nod and a wink. He had complete autonomy, there was no second line of scrutiny, everyone was happy. By present standards of open-ness and accountability, that seems to me like a place we wouldn't want to go back to.
Now the same job is handled by a team of several - mainly just to split the workload - but that means that within that team there have to be a few groundrules about what can or can not be accepted - it seems to be more difficult to apply the nod-and-wink method evenly across the board. So there is a percentage of under-distance (I don't know the figure) which is seen as acceptable but really that's only moving the goalpost a little way, its not giving the flexibility that many people seem to want.
You're suggesting going back to the French rules. I can't see a problem with that so long as it's interpreted 'in the spirit'.
You mean - in the French spirit? Well as good anglo-saxons (actually I'm a norman myself) we're simply incapable of doing things the French way - that is, screeds of rules which everyone then ignores.
Where we've gone wrong is in taking one half of the French method - the heap of rules - without being able to apply the other.
Since in this country we're culturally compelled to abide by the rules, any organisation like a cycling club should, logically, have as few rules as possible.