For some reason the issue is not vim-ale its something broken in the generic vim infrastructure.
debian.vim sets nocompatible which is supposed to stop the issue but it doesn't running vim -N or putting "set nocompatible" in ~/.vimrc fixes it
- Bug#1027771: vim-ale gives error messages when starting Craig
- Bug#1027771: its nocompatible Craig Small
- Bug#1027771: its nocompatible Sven Joachim
