Cobain was first elected to
Belfast City Council in
1985. He served as
Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1990–1991. In 1996, he was an unsuccessful candidate in the
Northern Ireland Forum election in
North Belfast. He was later elected as an
Ulster Unionist Party MLA for
North Belfast in
1998. Cobain was Chair of the Assembly's
Committee for Social Development and served two terms on the
Northern Ireland Policing Board. On 29 December 2007 he was named
MBE in the
New Year Honours 2008. After the Christmas 2010
water crisis, Cobain supported a vote of no confidence in Regional Development Minister
Conor Murphy, saying "At the end of the day in all of these issues the individual who leads the department is responsible and I have to say if this was any other part of the
UK, or any other part of these
islands, the minister would have been away weeks ago...This minister doesn't appear to accept any responsibility for anything." He lost his seat in the
2011 Assembly election. On 14 January 2013, Fred Cobain left the
Ulster Unionist party which he had served for more than 30 years. He joined the
Democratic Unionist Party saying the UUP was "riven with personal and policy divisions" and was "politically exhausted". Cobain was co-opted on to
Carrickfergus Borough Council as a councillor for the Carrick Castle area. He ran for the DUP but failed to be elected to the
Mid and East Antrim Borough Council in the
May 2014 Elections. He was elected for the DUP to the
Castle electoral area of
Belfast City Council in the
May 2019 Elections. ==Family==