Lyrics horizontal spacing too tight, not really adjustable

lyrics_spacing.mscz
1) Open the attached score. Note that the first 3 words have no space between them whatsoever.
2) Select the 3rd word "belong"
3) Try to move it rightward in order to increase the space between it and the previous word "cannot". You can use the Inspector x offset or use the right arrow key.
4) Instead of the word moving right, the note moves left and the space between the words stays the same (none).

The workarounds are:
a) Move the note, which also requires moving the stem as a separate user action, then move the lyric/word as another action.
b) Increase the layout stretch.

Depending on the specific measure I have to do one or the other. Layout stretch is easy. But sometimes it's just one note that needs to be moved rightward to create a little space. It's very awkward to do that now.
There is no global style property that affects this, AFAICT.

I just went through this for one measure in real vocal part. It took 6 steps to move one lyric, one word. You have to move the note twice as far to the right as you think you should, because when you move the lyric, it moves the note back to the left each time. Bloody frustrating and totally unintuitive. I want to move a single word of text to the right. Instead the note moves left?

If I turn off Automatic placement for the lyric, for the one word, this is worse. Then the note acts as if it has no lyric, and moves way left. The lyric follows it to the left, overlapping with another word. All this accomplishes is forcing me to move the note and lyric a bigger distance to the right.