Controlling defaults for ME options - doesn't work for cut/paste?

I'm using the ME edition of InDesign 2018. The majority of my work is exclusively left-to-right, so I've set all default options to those appropriate to English (UK) text. This works fine when I'm creating a text box with the text tool, but when I cut/paste text without having a cursor in a pre-existing text box, the automatically-created new text box always has "right-to-left text direction" selected in its Story options. Is there any way I can change this default?