“We’re all Everton fans now,” joked Labour MP Jeevun Sandher earlier this month ahead of Andy Burnham’s coronation as party leader and the United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister.Burnham’s allegiance to the Merseyside club was certainly no secret. A long-standing season-ticket holder and vocal supporter of his boyhood club, he had been pictured weeks earlier running in a retro Everton shirt from the 1980s.The following day, the club’s crest took pride of place on the front of national newspapers. Everton, for once, were headline news.To a certain extent, they are likely to continue to be. With Burnham having been appointed as Prime Minister today and fellow Everton fan Mark Carney already in situ as Canadian PM, now two of the club’s most prominent supporters hold the highest positions of elected office in their respective countries.Keep that one in your back pocket ahead of your next quiz night.Here, Patrick Boyland outlines Burnham’s personal and professional relationship with football…A ‘suffering’ fanBurnham succeeds Arsenal fan Keir Starmer, and his support for Everton has already been the subject of discussion across the Atlantic.“At least you can respect someone who has suffered,” was the response of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani — also an Arsenal fan — to the BBC when he learned of the incoming UK PM’s affiliation.“I like it when someone is a fan of a team which hasn’t just won and won,” Mamdani added with a mischievous smile.That final bit, of course, only rings partially true. Everton are trophyless since 1995 and have more recently faced battles for Premier League survival, before returning to the relative comfort of mid-table.Yet Burnham, who was born in 1970, will have witnessed far more successful times too, including the glory years of the 1980s where Everton were twice English champions, lifted the FA Cup in 1984 and won the European Cup Winners Cup the following year.Initially raised in the Liverpool suburb of Aintree, he is from a family of Everton supporters and had a season ticket in the Gwladys Street, where the most vociferous fans are housed. He grew up idolising Bob Latchford, the powerful, aerially dominant striker who made 12 appearances for England.Latchford during a league match against West Ham in 1971 (Credit: Allsport Hulton/Archive)Burnham claims he was part of the inspiration for Nick Hornby’s book Fever Pitch, after being part of a group of Everton fans who streamed onto the Highbury pitch to celebrate Adrian Heath’s extra-time winner in the 1984 FA Cup semi-final against Southampton.“He (Hornby) wrote that he loved that Highbury was used for some cup semi-finals until some stupid Everton fans ran on the pitch,” Burnham told FourFourTwo.